Brash, flash, giving it a lash

`R'right, pal?" Ron Atkinson extends a hand and his tanned even-tempered features fade behind that fluorescent TV smile.

Disappointingly, there is no Bolly, iced or otherwise, in evidence. He is not swaddled in a lavish robe nor does he seem to be doused in aftershave. Even Ron's legendary bigness is discernible only in a vague sort of way, more attributable to his extravagant mannerisms than to any real imposing girth.

It's definitely Big Ron, all right, but Saturday morning in the Westbury finds him groomed in sober black, sipping tea and watching Football Italia, for which he professes a love.

"I'm just watchin' this fella - was it Marineira?, who was manager of Inter Milan or some Italian club and they've sacked him just after he's received a golden trophy for coaching," he sighs before flicking the switch on a kindred spirit.

For Atkinson and soccer sackings are old bedfellows, his predominantly successful career segmented by breathlessly swift boardroom executions.

Suitably, his new autobiography - BIG RON: A Different Ball Game - opens with the most momentous, his dismissal from Manchester United in 1986. Not untypically, Ron marked the severance of his contract with a knees-up at his place that night. Most of the team turned up.

He reckons that a desire for immediate dramatic tension rather than the magnitude of the event prompted him to open his memoirs with that departure from Old Trafford.

"I didn't want an `I opened the curtains and it was nice and sunny' sort of book. I got the final draft when I was going to Barbados and I'm sat there, readin', readin' readin'. And then I said to myself `I'm quite enjoyin' this' Without fannyin', I enjoy the book."

Fair enough. And it is pretty forthright. Big Ron says it as he sees it, and thus Bobby Charlton gets a bit of a lashing, along with Tommy Docherty, Doug Ellis, Frank Stapleton ("In the sad act of grumbling, Frank was worldclass"), Mrs Shuan Teale ("the nightmare of footballer's wives"). And all this before the chapter entitled People I Wouldn't Go On Holiday With.

If Atkinson is worried about the reactions of those scrutinised through his insights, he hides it with a casual shrug.

"To be honest, I've met surprisingly few people I don't get on with. But what I've said won't change anything. It's no secret that there's no love lost between Doug Ellis (Aston Villa chairman) and me, that's for bloody sure. But I've tried to be analytical, which is no great issue for me."

It's just that occasionally, Big Ron's analytical propositions are, to draw from the title of his book, a whole different ball game.

In one astonishing passage, he endeared himself to the female population of China by admitting that he never understood the reasons for the population explosion there given that they had "in place the finest contraception on the planet - ugly women."

Telling it as he sees it. But no surprise; Ron is a man who as recently as 1989 declared that "women should be in the kitchen, the discotheque and the boutique (though presumably not at the same time), but not in football."

Yet for all that, there seems to be no innate malice in the character, he is more a product of his times; a rasher `n' eggs wheelerdealer with a devilish glint, a builder from Brummie with a shrewd eye for footballers and flash ties, the English family man by the pool in Majorca, all gold and tabloids and smiling pleasantries.

He is zestfully warm, colourful in a black and white fashion, meeting loyalty with the same. The best chapter in his book (comically titled The Three Degrees) deals with his relationship with Cyrille Regis, Brendan Batson and the now deceased Laurie Cunningham, all franchise footballers with West Bromwich Albion in the late 1970s and all black during an era when the terraces hissed racial poison.

"Those lads were magnificent, ambassadors. I don't think the modern black footballer knows what they did. Big Cyrille, I'll tell ya, you will not meet a finer man than Cyrille," smiles Atkinson.

"And I'll slaughter `im, you know, I'll say, `how are ya doin', ya big black bastard' an' e'll just wave an' say, `gaffer, mon.' I remember bringin' him round to my house and he said, `I wouldn't mind livin' round `ere, boss'. So I tell him, `then I'll sell up pal. Can't have you lot around here.' And `e'd laugh it off."

Atkinson dealt with the racism prevalent in the 1970s and 80s by confronting players with it, pushing their ethnic backgrounds to the fore.

"Then it became a non-issue. I'd say you Welsh twat or you daft Irish docket, we'd even play seven-a-sides between the English cream and the foreign scum. And the lads loved it."

The West Brom days are, you sense, his most cherished. He talks freely about his time there, pausing only to consider Laurie Cunningham, killed in a car crash in Madrid in 1989.

"I liked Laurie. A lot thought he was leery, flash. He weren't. Laurie was a deep kid. I wouldn't go on about the black thing with him too much. He might have struggled with the racism then, but at West Brom, being black was not an issue. Until they'd come out of the showers and show the others what being a black man was really all about," he says with chortle.

"But I remember being with him in Madrid at his new club and he took me out and he was a mover, you know, in the clubs, but you could talk to him quietly. He had a lot of plans then. It was sad."

Atkinson admits to being slightly unorthodox in his manner of dealing with players, such as the time he goaded the lethargic if gifted Dalian Atkinson into swinging fists at him in the dressingrooms after a Villa match. He chuckles at the thought.

"If you ever have a few beers with Andy Townsend, you'll piss yourself at him tellin' it. The lads have pulled us apart and I go out and there's John Motson standing there. So I say, `John, pal, yeah, let's talk. I thought we might have won', whatever. All the time I'm thinkin', if you'd had a camera behind that door, pal . . . wot a story."

Against that, he enjoyed unusually warm relationships with many of the finest players of recent times, like Norman Whiteside, Bryan Robson and Paul McGrath. He nods and grimaces appreciatively at the first mention of McGrath.

"There was never any harm in big Paul. And whatever was said about him, he was a world great. Never did see any better player across the spectrum. I think that in his time, he deserved to be on any world XI ever picked. That day in Giants Stadium? I could `ave played along side him that day, he was so magnificent."

At various times in his autobiography, Atkinson touches on the impact of alcohol on English football; his own reputation earned him the sobriquet of `Champagne Ron' and fables have sprung up about the Manchester United drinking club which allegedly flourished under his reign. Mostly myth, he says.

"The lads enjoyed a drink, sure. But take big Paul, he was a lad who had a social drink at best. I was never pulled aside for someone to say, `you'd need to watch him on the sauce'. It was blown out of proportion. You talk about drink, I remember being with the great Liverpool team in Israel one time . . . fack me. But Paul, I did worry about what he'd do after he finished in the game. But he's doing good. Fine lad."

He regrets not appearing on the Late Late Show tribute to McGrath, would have liked to have said his few words, quipped with the best of them.

These are busy times, though; Atkinson is increasingly in demand as the jocular TV pundit, he is plugging his book and paying homage to the sun spots with his wife Maggie. His underlying refrain is that he is grateful for what the game has given him. He has had parking spots reserved in the stadiums at West Brom, Manchester, Madrid, Sheffield and at his beloved Aston Villa and left them all nurturing few regrets.

"Well, I would have signed Gary Lineker from Leicester and said balls to it," he declares, referring to the time when the Old Trafford boardroom wouldn't meet the transfer fee.

But he occasionally still yearns for the dressing-room on matchday and, who knows, maybe the big man will grace a few more dug-outs yet. Atkinson stretches sumptuously and digests the possibility. "Ooh, aye. If the right scenario presents itself, I'll go back. You miss the competitive thing. You know, without bein' funny, I look at John Gregory at Villa now, doing a fantastic job, coming out with some corkers in the press, and I say, that was me at West Brom."

Big Ron shakes his head, temporarily stilled as though surprised at how long ago those times seem now. Instantly though, that benign familiar grin returns and he's back in guise; roguish, likeable, old shaper.