Wonderful to have seen great players like Slim Jim and Jinky

make them impregnable, but it’s a huge asset for them.

‘And, if you put that alongside the feeling that the Rangers culture felt about emasculation, about being rendered impotent by being put down to the bottom league, that has aggravated that sense of being disempowered.

‘It’s about the sense of being unable to do what was always part of their triumphalist nature.

‘When I started in the business, Rangers ruled the land. Celtic could do nothing against them until Stein came along.

‘After that, Stein had a period — then came David Murray. And, as I mention in my book, I always remember Murray saying to me: “I’ll buy the league…”

‘That was a Trump-ism before anyone knew what that was. But it indicated what he was about. He was about power.

‘Now, we all know that Celtic exert barometric pressure over what happens in Scottish football. They are a rich club, they have influence, they have admirers within the game itself and so they have more power than Rangers, and I think that must aggravate at Ibrox. They used to click their fingers and everybody jumped.

‘That loss of dynastic control over things lies at the root of all the complaints being made now.’

Celtic won nine-in-a-row in 1974 and Rangers followed suit in 1997. Neither made it as far as ten, although that mythical figure is looming into view for the Parkhead club now. The bitterness of local bragging rights has doubtless intensified feelings in recent weeks but, if Celtic make history next year, the veteran commentator will regard it in much the same light as he would two bald men fighting over a comb.

He adds: ‘Someone said to me: “Ten in a row in the Scottish league, what the hell achievement is that?”. Nevertheless, it’s there. It’s buried in the minds of people.’

It was a battle between Rangers and Celtic — in a very literal sense — which inspired his new book.

The riot which followed the 1980 Scottish Cup final at Hampden led to a ban on alcohol in Scottish grounds which holds 40 years later. The whole sordid affair also proved an oddly satisfying interlude in a career which, until then, had needed nothing more than an encyclopaedic knowledge of footballing cliches.

‘I used the word “enjoyed” in the context of that match the other day and that’s the wrong word,’ he says. ‘I got a lot of satisfaction out of moving away from cliche-ridden football commentary, if you want to put it like that, into something entirely new. Other sports broadcasters had been given that licence before, most notably David Coleman.

‘During the Munich Olympic massacre, he happened to be the only commentator who was available to cover it. He was, of course, a renowned sports commentator, but he covered that tragedy well. And phrases came out of mid-air as it were.’

As they did from Macpherson when he declared during the Hampden mayhem between fighting fans: ‘It’s like a scene from Apocalypse Now’. The phrase should have been printed on his business card.

‘Let’s not kid ourselves, these people hate each other,’ he said back in 1980 as the cameras beamed scenes of drunken combat to an appalled nation. ‘I had seen the film Apocalypse

Now around that period and that image stuck in my mind of the helicopter flying over the battle. Something like that was in the back of my mind. It was a totally different scenario for me to be commenting on. And I suppose I relished that challenge.’

If selling a book in the midst of a lockdown is a challenge, it’s nothing compared to the one faced by the unheralded heroes from that afternoon.

WPC Elaine Mudie was portrayed as a modern-day Joan of Arc when she charged the rioting hordes on her police horse Ballantrae after the beast was struck on the rear end by a toilet roll.

Then there was Tom McLeod, the police constable who opened a gate to trigger the pitch invasion by Celtic fans because he saw young fans being crushed against Hampden’s ten-foot perimeter fence. But for his actions, Glasgow might have witnessed a horrendous repeat of the Ibrox disaster or a precursor to Hillsborough.

‘Somebody asked me if he should be criticised for opening the gate, or if he might actually have incited the invasion. I think, on clear balance, he made the right choice,’ says Macpherson.

Scotland’s favourite commentator has yet to decide what his next book might be. All he knows for sure is that he’ll write one.

‘I said this whimsically to someone, but there is an element of truth to it: “What else am I going to do in a Scottish winter?”.’

l‘More Than a Game: Living with the Old Firm’ by Archie Macpherson, £14.99 paperback, is published by Luath Press and available from www.luath.co.uk, call 0131 225 4326 and from booksellers offering mail order delivery during the lockdown.

It has been about Rangers and Celtic since the day dot