Terry Butcher: My most public outburst off all time saw a door come

I HAD to travel to our reserve team game against Aberdeen during the week.

It's played at Stenhousemuir which is only five minutes from my house - one of the main reasons we play there is so I can pop home at half-time and have a cup of tea.

Anyhow, I bumped into the St Mirren manager and my ex Rangers team-mate Gus McPherson, who told me one of the funniest stories I've heard in a long while.

One of the directors at Stenny is Brian McGinley, a former grade one ref who cautioned me more times than the wife when he was an official.

A nicer bloke you couldn't wish to meet, Brian is one of the best after dinner speakers on the circuit today.

Anyhow, he recently went to a hotel near Stirling at a place called Drymen to do one of his famous speeches.

But as he was walking through the hotel lobby there was an almighty confrontation between two guests - and one ended up stabbing the other.

Horrified at what he saw and realising he was a key witness, Brian immediately picked up his mobile phone and called the police to report the incident.

When he had eventually regained his composure, with a fleet of cars from the boys in blue on their way, he went to the main reception desk to tell them what had happened.

The duty manager was called and informed Brian, with the straightest of faces, that he had indeed witnessed a murder. But within seconds, Brian's horror was replaced by total humiliation when he was told that the hotel was staging a murder mystery weekend and what he had just witnessed was all part of it.

Well Gus and I couldn't help ourselves. Brian came up to the stands and Gus asked him: 'How was your weekend Brian? I heard it was murder'.

I get on famously well with Brian now, but when he was an official it was a different story.

Famously I was once playing in a cup at Parkhead between Celtic and Rangers and we lost 1-0.

I was fuming with Brian's decision-making and went in serious pursuit of him at the end of the game.

I was swearing my head off as I reached the end of the tunnel only to be confronted by a door that I immediately kicked off its hinges.

The next day Chris Woods and I went down to our local, the Rising Sun in the Bridge of Allen, and the whole pub broke out into applause. I couldn't get my head round it, after all we had just lost to our arch rivals. What I didn't know was that when I kicked the door in Celtic boss, Billy McNeill, was doing an interview and everything was caught on camera.

As the door came crashing down, McNeill had to duck to avoid it coming down on his head. I was far more concerned about my language being picked up, it wasn't pretty.

I'm sad to say that the book signing sessions have made a comeback ahead of Christmas. On Thursday I went to The Fort, it's just off the M8, and a very nice old lady asked if could sign her book.

She apologised because the book she was holding wasn't my autobiography - it was a book called 'The Broons', a fictional Scottish family. Every year a new one hits the shelves and they are very popular.

I had no idea why she wanted me to sign it - I can only assume she thinks I look like one of them, which isn't a compliment.

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