I don't suppose I've ever told you about my one and only meeting with Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United. It was in September 1968, long before these heady days of triumph for both of us (his only slightly headier than my own, of course) and it took place in an apartment owned by the parents of one of my closest friends, Billy Cook, who lived opposite Ibrox Park, the home of the Forces of Darkness, otherwise known as Rangers Football Club.
Billy and I had gone to Ibrox to see "the Huns" play Vojvodina Novisad of Yugoslavia in the Fairs - later to become the Uefa - Cup, but my mind was in the French industrial town of St Etienne, where Celtic were playing that same night in the second round of the European Cup.
After the game, which Rangers won 1-0, Billy and I went back to his parents' house - he and his mother were great Rangers fans - where, he assured me, the Rangers players would be congregating for a party. Sure enough, they began arriving in jovial mood. One of them was Ferguson, who had a tired and emotional smile on his face as wide as the Clyde estuary.
Score from France
"Alex doesn't drink very much," Billy told me in the assured tones of an insider, "but he became a daddy today, and he's pissed."
The party was in full swing but, in those pre-Teletext days, the score from France was taking a long time to come through and I was becoming increasingly agitated, especially as some of the Rangers players had heard there was a "Tim" (Celtic fan/Catholic/ Irishman) in their midst and were giving me some good-natured stick.
John Greig (recently voted the club's "player of the century") was taking especially great delight in telling me what a dirty little so-and-so "Wee Jinky" - Celtic's brilliant winger Jimmy Johnstone - was. "He's always bootin' me, the bitter wee bugger," Greig said in his sing-song Edinburgh accent. Since my recollection of Old Firm games was of Greig trying, invariably unsuccessfully, to all but cripple the wee man, I wasn't slow to give him the horse laugh.
Then, from the far side of the room, where the television was, came a ragged cheer: "Ya beauty, St Etienne have beaten the Celtic two-nothin'." Instantly, as my heart sank, the party moved up a gear as those patriotic Scots celebrated the defeat of the champions of Scotland. Even the Cooks, in whose family there was not one bigoted bone, God love them all, could not resist joshing me, albeit in affectionate terms. Suddenly, standing in front of me, was Alex Ferguson. I braced myself for some more "banter". I had always regarded Ferguson, even before he went to Ibrox, as a dirty player. His nickname was "Elbows". What does that tell you?
"So what do you reckon, Pat?" he said. "D'ye think the Celtic will get through?" I hadn't spoken a word to him to that point, so I was astonished that he had picked up my name.
Big Jock
"It's going to be tough," I said apprehensively.
"Listen, son," he said (he was 3 1/2 years older than me). "Celtic are the best team in Europe by a distance. When Big Jock [Stein] gets them back to Parkhead he'll know everything there is to know about the French, and Celtic will paralyse them in the second leg. Nae danger. It'll be a scoosh case - four-nothin'. Ah'm tellin' ye."
I clutched at his words like a drowning man clutches a lifebelt. "Do you really think so, Alex?" And we began to talk. As we did, even though he admitted he had had more than a few to celebrate the birth of his first son (and what better excuse could there ever be?) I realised that this was no ranting zealot, but a thoughtful individual who belied the aggressive, occasionally manic streak he exhibited on the field.
At the close of the evening he accompanied Billy in seeing me off and, at the door, said again: "Don't forget, Pat - four-nothin' - remember I told ye." Two weeks later at Parkhead, Celtic beat St Etienne - yes, you've guessed it - 4-0.
I was reminded of this episode this week when reading Ferguson's autobiography, Alex Ferguson - Managing My Life, which my wife bought me for Christmas as a joke. Some joke - I could not put it down. He mentions the day his son was born but was obviously too pissed to remember me!
No matter. His book, ghostwritten by the peerless Hugh McIlvanney, is wonderful. I hope John Barnes, Celtic's new manager, reads and digests it. As a manual for the craft of football management, I have never read its equal. Interestingly, it confirmed me in three opinions I have long held.
One: Alex Ferguson is an estimable individual, totally devoid of the sectarianism that pervades Scottish society and, I am finally obliged to admit, the equal of the great Jock Stein, to whom he pays extraordinary tribute in the most moving chapter in his book.
Manchester United
Two: Rangers Football Club, which made Ferguson's life a misery because he happened to be married to a Catholic, really was the blight upon world sport we knew it to be. The anti-Catholicism at Ibrox as outlined by Ferguson is shocking - to hear about it from the inside is gut-churning.
Three: my contempt for Manchester United is well-founded. To read Ferguson's account of his problems getting a fair remuneration package for his efforts, or indeed the money to buy players for the so-called "biggest club in the world", is to be astonished. This is a club which cares more for its shareholders and the bottom line than it does for its fans, those poor suckers who were duped in childhood into supporting not so much a football club as a cynical exercise in merchandising.
If you don't believe me, read the book. It really is that good.