Big Dunc - From Barlinnie hell to Goodison heaven

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21-05-2025

As the sunshine beats through the window in a studio by the River Clyde, Duncan Ferguson is talking about the darkness in his early life.
Barlinnie Prison, where he spent 44 days and nights, is six miles away and 30 years in the distance, but right now, as he discusses the opening chapters of his autobiography, he's back there.
The sights and sounds and smells - they don't go away. They stay. Forever, you sense.
Ferguson's life story - the recently published Big Dunc - couldn't begin anywhere else. Rangers vs Raith Rovers, Ibrox, 1994. John McStay, a 'headbutt' while on probation for some fracas at a taxi rank and then a jail sentence in its wake. "Hell," as he calls it.
Tom English: You were 23 when you went inside. Reading what you witnessed, I cannot believe that they sent you to a place like that.
Duncan Ferguson: I'd locked it away until I started to do the book. It all comes flooding back. I couldn't do that time now. I don't think I could cope.
Back then, it was frightening. Sometimes you look back and you think, how did you get through it? How did you actually get through that? Because you're on your own. There's nobody backing you up, there's nobody helping you.
TE: You say there was also a bit of excitement involved.
DF: I was upset. I was worried. I was frightened. Of course I was. But I was also a wee bit excited to see what the nick was like. Because I was young and stupid.
You've seen the movies, haven't you? You've seen movies of prisons and you think, what's it like to be in there? So there was a wee bit of that, maybe not excitement, but certainly I was intrigued to what was actually going to happen in there.
TE: How long did that last?
DF: Not long. Because I realised it was hell.
TE: You describe your first night inside - the lights go out and the voices in the dark.
DF: Sitting at the end of that bed. Everything echoed. They're screaming at you. 'You're going to get cut in the morning'. That's what happened. They pinpoint where you are.
It was like they were focusing on me. You're worried sick. You've got to face that in the morning. I never slept a wink all night. I was terrified. I'm going to walk out on this landing in the morning and you think someone's going to stick a knife in you.
TE: You ended up working in the kitchen?
DF: The hospital wing. You've got designated jobs. The first few days, I'd slop out on the wing.
There was a block in the middle of the prison and there were about 12 cells in there for inmates who were getting cut or slashed or harming themselves. The paedophiles and that. Some of them get kept in there.
It wasn't too bad, because you're away from the main population during the day.
TE: And in there you were asked to go and counsel a young boy.
DF: I can't remember his name, but he tried to take his own life. He'd come over to the hospital wing. The guards had found out that he'd played for the Rangers as a kid. They asked me to go and speak to him.
TE: You were only a kid yourself.
DF: You think you're a man, don't you? I thought I was a man. I've got everything boxed-off. I was just a baby.
I had to go and speak to the boy and he was in a bad way. He told me a wee bit of his story. He was a good football player and it never quite happened for him. He got released. He ended up on drugs.
I hope he's doing well now. I still think about the boy sometimes.
As Ferguson recounts his spats in his early life, all the fighting and the endless grief, you ask him what he would say to his teenage self if he could sit him down now and talk to him.
DF: Don't drink. That would be the first thing I'd say to myself. A lot of trouble in my life has been through booze. We were young. We'd come off the estates. Everybody drunk. If I wasn't drunk when these incidents happened, I might have walked away.
TE: Your upbringing. You describe yourself as a stupid, daft laddie. But then you also say, I see myself as shy. Nobody really knows me. You look at the pages and stories you tell in your book, it doesn't look like the life of a shy young man.
DF: To this day, I have no friends. Good friends. I was a loner. At school, I was on my own with my ball. I took my ball to school. I never mixed. I walked my dog. I had my ferrets. I wasn't a mixer. I never mixed with my team-mates. I had some friends, but not a lot. I was a bit shy. I'm coming out of my shell a wee bit now.
TE: You're shy, but you were fond of a night out. Again, it goes back to the drinking. These fights at taxi ranks. This abusive guy who's on the crutches.
DF: I can't remember him on a crutch. He swung at me a wee bit. I was daft. I was drunk. You're chasing girls. I was 16 or 17. Stirling's a small place. I became a target. I was Duncan Ferguson, the football player. Look at the way he walks. Look at the way he's drinking that beer. Look at the way he's dancing. He thinks he's gallus. People were approaching me.
TE: I'll read you a quote from the book, after some sort of incident. The police came to see you. "I was laid out on the sofa, rotten, stinking drunk, buck naked, aside for a pink hat that someone had given me earlier. I had lipstick on, an earring and a silk glove." Now that's a picture.
DF: I can't remember the police coming. I was on the couch, gone. That's right. It was one of those crazy nights. I got young player of the year for Dundee United. We went into Anstruther. Not a pretty sight. I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight for the police when they came to have a look at me.
TE: Your parents at this time, they must have been worried sick about you. Is there guilt there?
DF: Absolutely. My mum and dad, I put them through it. That phone rings in the morning. Somebody knocks on the door. I put my mum and dad through hell.
TE: You're a dad now and you can put yourself in their shoes.
DF: Yeah, they must have been worried sick. The police were starting to knock on the door all the time. Headlines everywhere. Journalists outside the house regularly. The press were a bit naughty, but I gave them plenty of ammunition. I must have put my mum and dad through hell.
When Ferguson left Tannadice and joined Rangers for £4m, the move was the measure of his dreams.
He was a Rangers boy. He revered the manager, Walter Smith. He idolised the iconic striker, Ally McCoist.
The whole thing became a nightmare. Wild living, not enough game-time, scrutiny, trouble, minders, claustrophobia. And then he went for McStay.
Smith sat him down and told him he had to leave Glasgow for his own good. Sentencing was coming - Barlinnie not far away - but in the meantime he needed a new start. He went to Everton for a three-month loan that became a love affair.
TE: When Walter said you had to go, how did you feel?
DF: I cried my eyes out when he said it. I'd let him down. He was telling me I was coming back after the loan and I'm sure he was genuine at the time. But I cried. I'd failed. I was drinking heavier. I was out of control.
TE: The book is so honest. It's a terrific read. You weren't at Everton long and you got done for drink driving.
DF: That's right. On my own. Middle of the city centre. Saturday night. What do you do? I went for a drink, stupidly. We've got a game on the Monday against Liverpool and I'm out on a Saturday night. Nuts.
TE: This was Joe Royle's first match as Everton manager?
DF: Yeah and I'm in the police station, 3am Sunday. Liverpool on Monday. The star striker's in the nick.
TE: There's a good end to that story.
DF: Yeah, they let me out.
TE: Well, yeah, but you scored?
DF: Of course. That's me, isn't it? That's me. No preparation. In the jail. Get out and the rest is history. I battered them. Second half particularly. Guilt. That's what I was running on. Guilt.
TE: And you win the FA Cup? You scored 73 goals in 273 games for Everton across two spells spanning a decade. They love you down there. How long did it take for you to realise Everton - this is the place for me?
DF: About a week. Once I was in that city, I wasn't coming back. I had no minders. Nobody was targeting me. They knew me, but it wasn't the Rangers-Celtic thing, was it? There's no sectarianism. I felt free. And I was fitter. And I was getting minutes.
TE: Why does this club mean so much to you?
DF: The fans took to me. There was never any trouble off the pitch, only the drink driving offence. They needed somebody like me at the club. The team wasn't very good. They had a good tradition of big Scottish number nines. I fitted that mould.
TE: They could see the honesty.
DF: I was aggressive. The fans liked that. They wanted somebody to get stuck in for them. It all turned for me then. You're playing against Liverpool, Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. You're playing against some serious teams. It brought the best out of me. I still love the city. I still live down there. It's a great place to be.
TE: Striker, captain and then manager. That must have been cosmic for you?
DF: What a feeling. It was an incredible moment in my life and my career. One that I'll never forget. I'd captained the team, I'd scored a lot of goals for the club and then to manage them. So I've done it all there, really.
TE: You worked under Carlo Ancelotti at Everton and speak glowingly about him.
DF: I was on my mate's boat in Croatia, right? And Carlo's in the vicinity on his own boat. He's on the phone. "I'm coming to see you." "OK, no problem, Carlo."
I gave him the coordinates and he's coming out of the horizon in this big boat. He paid a right few quid for it. I could see him waving. As he's getting closer and closer, his boat is getting smaller. Our boat was about four times bigger than his. He spent his week on my mate's boat. His boat got left. It was really funny, like. A great fella. We just bonded.
It's not hard to understand the reasons why Ferguson brought a madly premature end to his Scotland career. Everything goes back to the fateful McStay incident.
The Scottish FA handed down a 12-match ban before his court case ever came around. He felt they sat as judge, jury and executioner.
When he came out of Barlinnie, they went after him again, trying to force through that suspension even though he had done time in prison and was now at Everton.
He thought it was a vindictive pursuit while reminding you that he went to jail for the McStay confrontation and "I didn't even get a yellow card".
TE: You quit Scotland in December 1994. You say, "I fell out of love with Scotland. I felt bitter. I felt the Scottish press had done me in, so I chucked it".
DF: I should have played. There's a massive regret. I should have played. I pulled out a lot of squads. Craig Brown, God bless him, protected me. He just said I was injured. I told him I didn't want to go and play for Scotland anymore. He said, "You're crazy man!" My heart wasn't in it. I went back a couple of times. I didn't like it.
TE: You went back for Austria 96 and Estonia 97, but that was it. Stubborn?
DF: My God. I wish I could go back, but you can't, can you? You're a young man. You're daft. You just don't listen.
I was on my honeymoon in the Bahamas during the 1998 World Cup. We played Brazil, didn't we? I should have been kicking off the ball. Daft. I was in my prime then as well.
They asked me every year for 14 years to go back. Bertie Vogts came to Everton. I brushed by him. Didn't even take him into a wee room, sit him down and listen to his spiel.
There was more, of course. More on his early years, more on his Dundee United boss Jim McLean - who fined him so heavily once that Ferguson's pay packet was minus £10 - more on Barlinnie, Rangers, Everton, Newcastle, his financial bankruptcy, his stints in management and his desire to have another go.
He's 53 and looking well. Is he happy? "No, not 100% happy, no. I don't think any of us are totally happy. I'm in a good place. You know, I've been in a lot worse place. I've been looking down the back of sofas for a few quid, you know what I mean?
"So I'm not there. And I'm healthy. I'm off the booze. I suppose I'm happy as the next man. My dream is to be a manager at the top. That's what I want. And when that happens, I'll be a real happy man."
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