I’d love to do Big Brother – but I couldn’t do Ex on the Beach... there’s not a beach big enough!

CHAMPAGNE CENTRAL, with its august dome and marble columns, is the first-floor bar in the Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow. And it seems the appropriate place to meet Frank McAvennie, the blond playboy who rampaged through football in the Eighties with a glass in his hand and a glamorous Page Three girl on his arm.

‘Champagne was all I drank back then,’ he says, chuckling.

Now, on the day we meet, it has ticked past noon and I ask him what he wants to sup. ‘Blackcurrant and soda, please.’

Really? Could he not be tempted by something stronger?

‘Don’t get me wrong I still enjoy a night out, but things are under control now,’ he says. ‘I sometimes go six weeks without touching a drop.’

McAvennie looks slick in jeans and a black shirt. At 56, a slight paunch attests to a good life rather than wild living, giving hope that a sometime dissolute frenzy of fame, depression and partying — including a spell on remand in Durham prison — has been tempered at least to the degree that he might not spiral into the fatal decline that claimed the liver and life of his hero and mentor, George Best.

It was 30 seasons ago that McAvennie, a wide-eyed Glasgow lad of 25 came from St Mirren to West Ham to hit the headlines south of the border. He was an immediate striking sensation, scorer of 26 goals in 41 league games, as John Lyall’s marauders challenged for the Double.

That fabled group fell just short of winning the championship, finishing third – the club’s highest finish – with 84 points and went out of the FA Cup in the quarter-finals. But McAvennie, Tony Cottee, Alan Devonshire, Ray Stewart, Alvin Martin, Alan Dickens are still among the revered ‘Boys of 86’.

Not until this year have West Ham returned to anything like such dizzying heights. In 30 years, they have finished in the top half of the table only six times, with four relegations.

But today Slaven Bilic’s West Ham take on Manchester United in the FA Cup, lying a place higher in the Premier League.

Over a salad, McAvennie salutes the ‘Boys of 16’, but let’s first go back over the Scotland international’s own uproarious impact on the English game.

‘Aye. I was a great club man — Stringfellows, Browns and Blondes,’ he jokes. ‘Oh West Ham, Celtic and St Mirren, you mean?

‘When I came to West Ham I was a wee, young lad who had never left Glasgow. I had a thick Scottish accent. When I shouted in training everyone thought I was trying to pick a fight.

‘There were rumours I asked John for a transfer. I didn’t, but I was homesick. John told the boys to look after me. So we went out to Stringfellows. I was introduced to Peter [Stringfellow]. I hit it off with him.

‘I never went out if it interfered with my football. I couldn’t have played if I had. But, don’t get me wrong, I’d go to London and stay up until four o’clock, easy.’

Was he the biggest reveller in all football? ‘In my team, yes. But more than George Best? No. He was different class to me.’

McAvennie’s hot streak on the pitch coincided with a TV rights dispute and the broadcast blackout meant that few knew what McAvennie looked like.

But fame came like a thunderclap one Friday evening when, as Europe’s leading scorer, he appeared on Wogan with Denis Law. ‘That changed my life. Overnight. It was watched by something like 20 million people. The next day I was being stopped all the time.’

Today McAvennie bemoans the lack of stardust in Scottish football. But in England he still sees players who lift the spirit. ‘I have always thought football is about entertainment. I’d give anything to train with the modern Barcelona. Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, och, they’re brilliant. It’s different but I do like this West Ham team. Dimitri Payet and Diafra Sakho — I’d love to play with them. Good players.’

And today’s match? ‘I fancy West Ham. This Man United is a mistake. They need to get rid of Louis van Gaal. I’m sure that will happen, and Jose Mourinho will come in. Now, he is a manager I’d run through a brick wall for.’

After a 15-year career, McAvennie’s post-football life involved a fair amount of running into brick walls.

In 1995, when he was stopped by Customs officials in Dover with £200,000 on him, half of it his own money. He claimed it was to fund an expedition to salvage a sunken treasure ship in the Atlantic. The court sided with Customs, who said, rather more plausibly, that it was to fund a major drugs deal in Holland.

Five years later he stood trial in Newcastle for conspiracy to supply drugs and spent a month on remand but was later cleared.

He has since moved back to Glasgow, having split from his second wife, Karen. He is now living with Moya. ‘Everything is great in my life. I play golf, I walk my dog, I am on TV and do some after-dinner speeches and charity work.’

He is also keen on appearing on a reality TV show. ‘I’d love to do the Jungle or Big Brother,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t do Ex on the Beach — there’s not a beach big enough.’ Any regrets? ‘Yes, but what pleases me most is I am best known for football. A few years ago I thought I might be remembered for all the wrong reasons.’ With that we leave our seats and go down the hotel stairs. Some big trunks are displayed as artwork on the balcony. ‘Ah, that must be the sunken treasure,’ he jokes.

Did he ever find that bounty? ‘No, never,’ he says. ‘Strange that... And off he went to his car, still smiling.