guilt

“I totally understand it, though. I loved my time at Hearts, I need to say that. It was only a short time, but I thought my Hearts team were a breath of fresh air for Scottish football last season.

“I really enjoyed what we managed to achieve. It shows what can be done despite not having the huge financial muscle of Rangers and Celtic to compete with, and I was proud of what we did there.

“I think taking a team who finished in the bottom six and getting to 80 points, I just felt a real injustice at the end of it all. So I think I understand it’s not going to be great for me [on Wednesday], but I get it.”

Hearts led the Scottish Premiership for most of the season, only to lose 3-1 at Celtic Park as the reigning champions retained the title in the most dramatic fashion.

“At the time, at Hearts, we were hurting last season,” McInnes said. “It was almost as if we were in mourning. That seems a bit exaggerated, but that’s how it felt.

“We were all kind of clinging to each other in the first part of the close season. It’s a time when we felt we should all be sticking together. So I kind of feel the guilt that I had a decision to make, whether I stayed or whether I left.”

McInnes realises how Hearts fans felt about his exit, given he himself had a similar reaction to captain and leading scorer Lawrence Shankland having already announced he was moving to Ibrox.

“I remember how I felt then, how I felt a bit let down, a bit flat with the whole thing. For me to make a similar move a couple of weeks later, I understood that,” McInnes added.

“The treatment I get is what it is, and you could say I deserve it, but nothing will change how I felt about my time at Hearts.

“I think there was a real injustice. We felt that grievance towards the end of the season that we should have won a title.

“I wanted to be a manager that won a title outwith the Old Firm. But for a few contentious decisions going against us, I think we would have won it.”

The Repair Shop expert Kirsten Ramsey was on hand to help restore a prized Pride of Birmingham Award, which was accidentally smashed

A mum was left feeling terribly guilty after accidentally breaking her son’s most prized possession while doing the housework.

During Wednesday’s (October 21) episode of The Repair Shop: Beyond the Barn, BBC viewers saw ceramics expert Kirsten Ramsey tasked with fixing an award statuette belonging to Mikey Akers from Coventry. In a cutaway scene, viewers saw Mikey alongside his mum Louisa share more about the incredible story behind the award.

In 2018, Mikey was 16 years old when he won a Pride of Birmingham Award for his tireless campaigning to raise awareness about verbal dyspraxia, after being diagnosed with the rare neurological speech disorder when he was two.

Mikey struggled to learn to speak and, throughout his childhood, needed intensive speech therapy to find his voice.

When he was 13, he wrote a poem called I Am The Boy about his struggles and set up campaign organisation, Mikey’s Wish, to raise awareness and support other young people with the condition.

Louisa explained: “It affects the messages from the brain to the mouth, and they struggle to move the muscles and the nerves in order to form the sounds needed for speech.”

Speaking about his diagnosis, Mikey added: “Growing up with verbal dyspraxia was quite lonely. People outside of my family struggled to understand what I was saying. It was quite common that people thought I weren’t as intelligent because of my speech. It was very frustrating.”

Mike was ecstatic with the Pride of Birmingham award and called it his “proudest achievement”; however, the angel-like trophy was damaged when Louisa knocked it off a shelf while doing housework, shattering it. “When it shattered, I was mortified. I felt so guilty”, Louisa told the camera.

Back at the Repair Shop, Kirsten was determined to make the award look brand-new again and said, “You don’t get this unless you’ve done something quite extraordinary.”

The expert explained that it would be tricky to recreate the award’s shiny surface because of all the broken pieces that would need to be reattached.

As Mikey and Louisa visited the barn to collect the award from Kirsten, Louisa said she “just wanted to see it back in one piece again.”

Miraculously, Kirsten had managed to make the award statuette look brand new, leaving Mikey elated. “Oh wow, Thank you”, he told Kirsten while Louisa joked: “The guilt has gone”, as the mother and son giggled.

“I am proud of him”, Louisa added as Mikey confirmed: “It brings me back to when I first got it, it’s a nice feeling.”

Kirsten commented: “You’re clearly an inspiration to many, many people, which really spurred me on to try and do the best job that I possibly could, and It’s ready to go back to whatever safe spot you’ve got for it. “

The Repair Shop Beyond the Barn is available to stream on BBC iPlayer