THE only time Dick Campbell rants and raves these days is when he sees someone smoking.

And even then Scottish football’s longest-serving coach and manager manages to internalise his anger, just as he does these days in a dressing room when shouting has been replaced by a softer approach.

Campbell’s feeling towards those who enjoy a puff are understandable. He took his own smoking incredibly seriously to the extent that it came close to killing him. Indeed, cancer is always in the background. There is every chance this almost 63-year-old will face some battles down the line.

Not that you would know this when talking to one of the most genuine blokes you could ever meet, a man I have known for 20 years and who despite all his problems remains deeply involved in football as manager of Arbroath, runs businesses with twin brother Ian and plays more golf than ever before.

He ain’t slowing down any time soon and perhaps the reason why is that Campbell shouldn’t really be here at all.

“That is six years now since I’ve been diagnosed and it was a major blow at that time, I’ll not lie to you,” said Campbell who it must be said looks good. “All this rubbish I read about someone like me making a full recovery… I just have to deal with, it doesn’t go away. I’m dealing with it at the moment.

“I had a wee operation about three months ago, and I’ll go back again in November, I am living with it, I am keeping it under control. I stopped smoking when I got diagnosed. I smoked far too much. I would have to say to you, Neil, and I genuinely mean this, I cannot believe when I look back on my life how much I smoked. I used to have a cigarette at Ibrox at half-time. I have never thought of one since and won’t either.

“When I see people smoking now I get so frustrated. I want to go up to them and shout ‘what are you doing?’ I get so angry that I did that to my family.”

And he did put his family through a lot. You get the impression this is what Campbell is most angry about. Not the damage he did to himself, rather what his loved ones had to endure when things did not look good at all.

“When the consultant showed on the screens the damage the cancer had done, my brother and three sons got very upset,” said Campbell who first realised something was wrong when at a friend’s house for dinner he collapsed.

“When I was first taken to hospital they took tests and found out there were tumours in both kidneys. One was small and so I get that removed with keyhole surgery but the other was a major operation.

“If I hadn’t had that operation I was away. That is what my consultant told me, a guy called Gordon Brown who was emigrating the next month. See when you are told that, there are no words which can describe what everyone felt.

“I did say to them ‘get up you, I’m not beaten yet.”

And he wasn’t. Campbell is a clever man and didn’t need an internet search to know a large cancerous tumour on the kidney is just about the worst thing a man of his age could get. It was a grim time.

He was days from flying to Chicago where he’d learned about surgery which could save him, when he got a call from home to tell him to get into his local hospital right away.

“You will never hear me run down the NHS,” said Campbell. “They saved my life, having given me six years and that’s meant I’ve been able to watch my grandchildren grow up.

“Really, I’m getting on with it. I am playing golf at Gleneagles twice a week, I am a general manager at Avenue Scotland, which is a big responsibility, we have a recruitment company, a care company with 400 people in it, and a glazing company.

“There’s many a night, let’s not kid anyone on, when I would love to be able to run as I used to. I just can’t because of my illness.”

So with so much going on, why is he still in football management? In truth, it is as much an addiction as the fags once were.

Someone told him recently he was closing in on 1300 games on the touchline, he was assistant to Bert Parton “a fantastic and under-estimated man” during some great times at Dunfermline who he also managed along with Cowdenbeath, Brechin City, Partick Thistle, Forfar for seven-and-a-half years and now Arbroath who sit mid-table in the lowest tier of Scottish senior football..

“Saturday is for the fitba,” says Campbell his eyes lighting up. “I have my two poached eggs in the morning and then me and my coaching staff (Ian, John Ritchie and John Young) who have known each other for years get in the car and get to the game.

“What a life we have. Honestly, the craic on the way to and from games and training is brilliant. We have a scream from start to finish. We must be the oldest management team in the world. When we win we go for a pint. When we lose we go for a pint.”

Campbell was hurt and stunned when Forfar sacked him. He thought about playing golf, his first passion, at weekends. That lasted two Saturdays.

He speaks warmly about Arbroath and has high hopes for them even stating he would walk away at the end of this season if they don’t finish within the play-off places in League Two.

These days Campbell is happy to take a step back and observe the training sessions. His abilities as a coach are not as respected as they should be. Maybe it’s the cap or the Fife accent, as if that matters.

“Jackie McNamara still calls me gaffer,” he says of his favourite pupil. “So does Owen Coyle who got me the sack at Dunfermline. I’m the only manager the big sod didn’t score goals for!”

The close relationship he enjoys with these two might come as a surprise to those who recall a newspaper releasing video of him singing The Sash to Rangers fans in a bar in Seville. Campbell is still angry at being “done in” and would hate anyone to think that was him.

He was daft, nothing more. His wife is a catholic and all three sons were brought up in that faith. Indeed, you will do well to find someone with a bad word to say about this fine footballing man who has plenty more to offer.

“Me retire? Nah, not going to happen,” he says. “I love it. I still go in on a Saturday with a buzz. You go in and half-time and it’s a buzz. I have had a fantastic time and I am nowhere near to stopping.

“Someone mentioned to me I was at 1240 games in a dugout, as both coach and manager, which is something. Myself and the guys have had seven promotions, we want eight, we want more.

“What else is there to do with life? Who would have thought I’d have achieved what I have done. I’ve coached, managed, I was a SFA staff coach for 20 years and that’s something I’m really proud of. I’m a member of Gleneagles; that’s not bad for a working class miner’s son from Fife.”

Dick Campbell is very good at living his life and the longer he does it for, the better for all of us. Just don’t smoke in front of him.