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"I doubt if there's a picture of him up there."
"So I decided to be remembered as the Pharaoh whose picture was missing from the temple."
"The Akenaten of Ibrox."
"Yes, and you know how I decided to do it? To have my likeness erased?"
"No."
He rubbed his head again. "That thing hurt like fuck! By leading the bastards somewhere they'd never been before. Relegation."
"It's a weird way to want to be remembered."
"I was feeling pretty weird. Maybe I just thought that if Fate was going to play a joke like that on me, I was going to come up with a better joke." He stubbed out his cigarette angrily, although it was only half-smoked. "Or maybe I just wanted a reason to bother. What the hell do I know?"
"I'm sorry."
"Aye, well I didn't really know how I was going to go about it, or even if I really wanted to. For a few weeks, I couldn't really think about much except.... Well anyway I got through it. More whisky?" I held out my glass.
"Thanks."
"The funny thing is it's not like you think it would be. Being told you've only got a short time before you hang up your boots. You'd think you'd want to go round the world or something. Shag as many women as you can. The truth is you can't be bothered. That's how I felt. After the shock wore off. It all started as something to fill in the time."
"What started?"
"Wim Plook."
"Wim Plook?"
"My first signing for Rangers. The Dutch Maestro, the second Johann Cruyff."
"Second rate, you mean. He's crap."
"Absolute crap, but what a brilliant name! I was feeling pretty low. The idea of signing someone called Plook somehow cheered me up. So I went to the Board and said I needed to sign a mid-fielder. As soon as I said he was foreign, there were no questions asked. This is Ibrox remember. And it just went from there."
He paused to light a cigarette. The room had gone dark, and the lighter flame flickered in his watery eyes.
"My first thought was to sign a whole team of daft names."
"That's why you signed Zoltan Vinnega!"
"Exactamente, son. God, he was crap!" He shook his head and chuckled throatily at the recollection of the little fat Hungarian the fans called Buddha. "But the problem with Zoltan, was that he was hard to beat. Not with the ball. My granny could tackle him. But how do you top a name like that?"
"Difficult."
"Difficult? Im-bloody-possible! So I had to get more imaginative. That's when I signed Bela Sfronty."
"Hungary's second worst footballer. After Zoltan."
"Indubitably. But one of the best anagrams playing in Europe today." He looked at me, eyebrows raised. I shrugged.
"Y Fronts. You know I tried to sign his brother too? I wanted a pair of Y Fronts in defence."
"To control the high balls in the middle."
"That's the spirit. Here." He filled my glass to the rim.
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