JOHN LAMBIE thumbs through a Partick Thistle programme to remind himself which role he retains at the club.

“Ach, what do they cry me,” he asks himself. “Ah, here I am. The honorary vice-president.” He rolls his eyes ever so slightly at this grandiose title. His unofficial one at Firhill, not to mention Hamilton Academical and St Johnstone where he played in their greatest side, is, of course, that of living legend.

And I'm delighted to report that Lambie is very much alive even if his health has not been great of late. However, he looks good at 75, his mind remains sharp, as is that tongue of his which got him into a bit of bother over the years.

Put it this way, our conversation needed some editing before being put on the page.

Two dinners this month, a celebration of Partick Thistle’s 140th birthday and a reunion with his old team-mates at St Johnstone, require his presence but Lambie doesn’t feel up to either, which is a shame because there is a lot of love out there for this great football man.

And not just from the fans but also many of his charismatic players, no manager has ever worked with more, to use his word, head-bangers, and few in Scotland boast a better record of getting success from the most meagre of resources.

“Honesty is the best policy, son,” he tells me when asked to sum up his skills as a manager. “Look at all the ex-players who still contact me. That gives me a lot of pride. Chic Charnley is on the phone every week. Callum Milne, Steve Pittman, Martin Hardy were all head bangers, Steve would kick his granny, and I hear from them a lot.

“And there was the late John McNaught who I had at Accies. What a player. He was a head-banger but they’re the kind of guys I like. They are the guys that win you things, the ones who play for you.

“Chic was brilliant. I had no problems with him. How do you think I got him four times? The thing you need to know about Chic is he has a heart. We had our moments but I loved him. We remain close.

“Paul Kinnaird was another one. Totally off his head but could play and I got the best of him. He liked a bet. I do remember there was a time when some gangster was going to get PK and hang him by his ankles from a three stories up if he wasn’t paid.

“I went through a lot of this myself, you see. I was a head-banger. I was a compulsive gambler at 16. My brother Duncan and I got into the bookmakers, we even worked at the dog track, and that changed me.”

The Lambies did well in the gambling game but football was always his first love. Coaching soon became an interest after he stopped playing. It was his good fortune Jock Stein took a shine to him.

“I was on a coaching course at Largs and we had a role-playing exercise,” Lambie recalled. “I was the trainer and John Prentice, who I had played with at Falkirk but we didn’t get on, was the manager of a club who was going to sack me.

“Well, Mr Stein’s tip was that I hadn’t to give him an in. So I walked in the room, went right up to him, shook his hand and said ‘we’re going to get on great, you and I will be brilliant.’ I kept talking so he couldn’t say anything.

“Finally he did get in, told me I was no longer needed and took my fist and slammed it down on the table, catching him on the nose.

“I remember Ross Mathie had to play the star player who has lost his form and we had to work out what this was. Turns out he wasn’t having enough sex!”

Lambie was coach at Hibernian for seven years and then in 1984 took over as manager at Accies when his old pal Berti Auld left.

“I loved that club,” he said. “They were great times There was a real bond and some brilliant laughs. I did once try to sign the only Brazilian who couldn’t play football. Ha.”

He put together a truly memorable team for those for those who watched them. They won two promotions to the Premier League and, of course, beat Graeme Souness’s Rangers 1-0 at Ibrox in the Scottish Cup.

“I had one director who was wanting a draw and another man who I employed wanted us to get beat that day,” he says shaking his head.

It is at this point in the conversation when up pops the name of Ian ‘Fergie’ Russell, an Accies fanatic, Scotland’s most famous supporter in the 1980s, and something of a character.

“Fergie sold papers at Central Station in Glasgow. The referee Brian McGinley was out with his wife, clocked Fergie and tried to sneak away but was spotted and Fergie shouts ‘Read all about it. McGinley makes a **** of it again.”

At this we are both in hysterics and the stories keep flowing.

“George Fulston (a director at Accies) wanted to put Fergie in a cage. The idea was when the referees and everyone else went away they would let him out.” Fulston, it would be fair to say, is not on the Christmas card list.

After one promotion with Hamilton, he took the players, wives as well, over to Fuengirola. “We nearly all got the jail,” he says. Turns out a bounce game arranged for some extra pesetas ended up a boxing match.

Lambie had three tours of duty in Maryhill. The first ended after a season when he tipped off his stay would be short despite doing well.

“Jamie Fairley, an old player of mine, was in a restaurant and overheard two people, who happened to be Thistle directors say that I was out and Sandy Clark was in. I walked and Clark was in two days later.”

However, Lambie made his way back to Thistle, won promotion to the Premier League and kept them in it against all odds but then chose to take the Falkirk job after Jim Jefferies left.

He had been a player at Falkirk for ten-and-a half-years as a player but his time as manager was hellish.

“There were too many cliques in the dressing room and I wanted to sweep them out,” he says. “It was difficult. We lost to Stenhousemuir in the cup and later I was driving with my pal and someone tried to run me off the road. He got sorted out!”

Lambie was out of football for the best part of three years when Partick Thistle, then staring oblivion in the face, needed a miracle worker. He saved them from relegation into the bottom tier and then won two promotions. In his last season, fittingly in the Premier League, he guided the team to fifth and at 65 retired.

There was talk of an autobiography last year but he didn’t fall it through. A shame. Lambie has so many tales to tell, many of them have been kept out of this piece to protect the guilty, and he remains great company.

“I had a great life in football and don’t really have any complaints,” he says when I get up to leave. “I just wish football was more exciting now.” It would be certainly be a lot more interesting if Lambie and his headbangers were still about.