Ferguson Alex - Squeaky Bum Time: the Wit, Wisdom and hairdryer of Sir Alex Ferguson

T his is an era when football managers are taught to see nothing and say even less. They surround themselves with PR gimmickry and perfumed media assistants. They choose to be bland and churn out formulaic answers that will not stimulate or offend anyone. A dreary protocol saturates press conferences, an acceptance that questions have to be couched in a certain way, and that it is going to be a prosaic experience full of anodyne clichs and predictable answers.

Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the exceptions to the rule. On form, Manchester Uniteds manager is journalistic gold-dust droll, trenchant and unafraid to voice an opinion. Ferguson prefers to speak in plain English rather than over-the-moon-Brian clichd football-speak and he has never been scared of saying something in public that other managers would only whisper in private. The man is an inexhaustible source of one-liners, put-downs or, when the mood takes him, long and impassioned homilies about politics, history and the world in general. Ferguson would be the perfect guest for a Fantasy Dinner Party XI, although he would expect only the finest wine. Jos Mourinho brought him a bottle once. It was like bloody paint-stripper, Ferguson spluttered the following day.

Every Friday we we being Manchesters football writers head for Uniteds training ground wondering which Ferguson will turn up. He will often be singing when he comes up the stairs for his weekly press briefing. He might even be waltzing with an imaginary partner, full of banter and levity. But dont bet on it. There are other days when he is wearing a face that says Do Not Disturb gruff and empurpled, like an officer from the Serious Crime Squad. On those days you know one misplaced word or clumsy question might set off that hair-trigger temper. Yet, even when he is at his most terse and obstreperous, Ferguson will nearly always give us a decent line. Then he will wrap it up and send us on our way, with the classic payoff line away and write yer shite.

What we know is that we are dealing with a man who is unrivalled when it comes to working the media. Ferguson has always known the back pages can be used to his advantage, whether it be motivating players, rousing supporters or cutting down to size one of his many enemies (sometimes all at once). He takes pride in being an agitator and, for the most part, he doesnt care what people think of it. He has played the game, politically, longer and more assiduously than anyone else in football. It has been an epic, anachronistic run, and there is no end in sight just yet. Ask him about it and he will put you right very quickly: Retirement is for young people.

In press conferences you come to realise that, more often than not, he comes armed with what he wants to say. Sometimes he will improvise, but generally he knows what to deliver and when. All it takes is a one-liner and the back pages are instantly cleared for him. Its squeaky-bum time, he told us one spring morning, in the midst of an epic title run-in with Arsenal. Which other manager could come up with a saying that would go on to be immortalised in the Collins English Dictionary? Squeaky bum time is now an accepted part of the football lexicon, regurgitated in that part of every season when the heat of the battle is dangerously close to intolerable. Or, to cite the dictionary definition, the tense final stages of a league competition, especially from the point of view of the leaders.

At other times the whiplash of Fergusons tongue can be genuinely shocking. Quick, like a cobra strike. Ferguson has stirred Kevin Keegan to a state of apoplexy and provoked Arsne Wenger into a loss of sang-froid. He has put the fear of God in the Football Association and provided more slam and blast back pages than any other manager currently in the business. Nobody has been so consistently quotable. Or so routinely controversial.

But there is much more to Ferguson than that. The soft-focus Ferguson prides himself on being a great raconteur, a mans man, determined to grab life by the balls. He likes to make people laugh and will often send himself up and, in those moments, you absorb every word and remind yourself that time in his company, with the shackles off, is both a privilege and an education.

The mind goes back to that night in Moscow, in 2008, before the Champions League final against Chelsea when Fergusons demeanour was more like a man arriving for a family barbecue than a manager on the cusp of his single most important match since the turn of the century. I love you all, he cried out, his eyes sparkling, spreading out his arms in the manner of the Pope. I have come to spread peace.

It was not the usual way a manager would address an audience of journalists, television crews, photographers and blazer-wearing UEFA officials. Yet this was Ferguson at his best: warm, charming, convivial and incredibly relaxed, given everything that was at stake. I feel good, he volunteered when he was asked to describe his state of mind. And then he started to twitch his arm exaggeratedly. Apart from the shakes, of course

But there have been other press conferences that last less time than it takes to boil an egg. No doubt you will have heard about the famous Hairdryer, the shouting, his ferocity when the bee in his bonnet starts to buzz out of control. Its all true. Hes every bit as frightening as is made out. One prick of his temper glands and he will be up, leaning forward, jutting out his forehead, indiscriminately machine-gunning swearwords at someone who has asked or written something he doesnt like. Its the eyes. Those rheumy, pale-green eyes. They stare you down. Your palms begin to sweat. You mouth feels dry, as if you have just swallowed a tablespoon of sawdust. You start to feel pathetically weak. The outburst might last only a few seconds but it always feels so much longer. And you realise you are half-bowing, staring at your feet. Its a degrading experience.

His character can rub against the world like sandpaper sometimes. Ferguson can be tough, uncompromising, a bit of a bastard a legacy, undoubtedly, of his upbringing in Govan, one of Glasgows tougher districts.

Essentially, though, Ferguson is a football romantic, a man who loves nothing more than nostalgic reminiscences about the sport that has made his life. Few people in football talk with such rich and colourful language and, for that, we journalists will gratefully cling to his coat-tails. Good nannies (nanny goats: quotes) are the jewels of our trade and Ferguson is the king of the punchy one-liner. Profane and profound, hilarious and humbug. He has become a living Dictionary of Quotations.

Nobody, for example, spoke with greater eloquence after George Bests death. George burst on to the scene at a liberated time, with an explosion of music, the Beatles, style, fashion and a freer way of life. He carried the dreams of everyone in the Sixties. As well as his talent as a fantastic player, what remains in my mind is his courage. I can see him, even now, flying down the wing, riding tackles. He has left us with a million memories and all of them good. The best talent our football has ever produced.

Then there is the biting Fergie humour (particularly when there are no television cameras around). There was the referee who annoyed him one week. That bloody ref, he volunteered, he runs like the hairs in his arse are tied together. Or the time, a few years back, when United imposed a dress code on their foreign trips for the travelling media. You look like a bunch of Bombay moneylenders, Ferguson brayed. Jesus Christ, your mothers wouldnt be proud.

The mind also goes back to the press conference on the day of his sixty-fifth birthday. You havent got rid of me yet, he called over his shoulder on the way out. No matter how many times you have tried. Im still here. You lot will all be gone before I am. Ill see you all off. He might be right, you know. And you can quote me on that.