YOU would be forgiven for thinking the bespectacled, smartly dressed, trim, studious-looking man walking across the room was a teacher or perhaps a lawyer.

And when he opens his mouth, at least at first, the articulate manner in which he carefully puts together sentences would back up that initial assertion. It wouldn’t take long for the mask to slip.

John Gahagan, former footballer and now Scotland’s most popular after-dinner speaker, is complex, outrageous, humble and most certainly funny. A listen back to the interview recording is essentially me laughing.

We begin to talk about pushing buttons in order to get a reaction from a crowd which doesn’t quite know how to react, and I remind him about a lunch a few years back when I watched him perform a routine which would have made Frankie Boyle look like Russ Abbot.

“Aye, that was the day I told the joke that Paula Yates should be playing with the England cricket team because she’s the only person in the last 10 years that has gone Down Under, f***** the Aussies and came back with The Ashes. It threw the room.”

Allow me to nick Gahagan’s self-penned introduction which is given to a room before he gets to his feet.

“Eleven years with Motherwell reserves. Four years with Greenock Morton as a trialist. Five managers put him on the transfer list. Every team he played with got relegated.”

For half an hour or so, this former journeyman footballer can make a room shake with laughter and jaws dropping. Anyone who has ever seen Gahagan as a turn will tell you that the five-time speaker of the year cannot see any line in the sand.

He takes out a notebook filled with notes, ideas, gags and subjects for which the word taboo was invented.

“It started when I was at Morton,” Gahagan tells me. “My manager was Allan McGraw was due to speak at a function in Dunfermline, but had a bad fall. They asked for someone to stand in and basically apologise on his behalf.

“But Stuart Rafferty said to me ‘you did something at your testimonial, why don’t you do a couple of gags?’ I thought it was a good idea. Jim Leishman was the main speaker, I got up, apologised, spoke for about five minutes and got back down again. Big Jim told me that I had something. I said that it wasn’t for me, but Jim pointed out that the punters had liked me.

“But my mind was made up. That was it. One time and the last time. I was so tense, I’m thinking why would I want to go through that again?”

Then a few months later, he got a call which at the same time changed and saved his life.

“My football career was over,” said Gahagan “I was divorced. I had nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing. We got paid buttons at Motherwell and Morton. But my wife had got everything anyway. I was living with my maw. I was signing on.

“So Jim phones up to ask if I fancied a dinner in Grangemouth. I said no, only for Jim to tell me he could get me £80. That was more than I got for the dole. So I spoke, it didn’t go well, but Jim was really supportive. He saw something in there but it was bad. Really terrible.”

However, Gahagan persevered and is now the go-to comic for certain shindigs.

“I read a lot about the music business and there are people who believe singers are summing up demons which allows them to become a different person so they can do the artistry,” says Gahagan.

“It is like a schizophrenia. I am a different person up there. If that guy doesn’t take over then I’m dead. This is my job, but it’s not full time. I couldn’t do it all the time. It would drive me mad. The other guy would take over.”

The asterisks key is now worn out in a bid to repeat some of the unrepeatable, such as “my wife was a lazy woman. Every time I went for a p*** in the sink it was full of dishes.”

He adds: “I love this one. It’s nicked. ‘There I was last night pulling off the boxers. My burd said you don’t have spoil they dugs.’” And so forth

“I do operate between fantasy and reality,” Gahagan admits. “Tommy McLean told me to cut it out because I used to tell the story that he put me on the bench when Motherwell gave me a testimonial. He didn’t. But it’s funny because I spent the best part of 100 appearances for that club on the bench, and most of them came under Tommy.

“I always liked the one when I asked Jock Wallace why I was in the second team and he said: ‘because you’re too f****** good for the third team.’ It’s not that far from the truth.

“Andy Goram was in the crowd. He was at Motherwell and someone had written IRA on his car outside Fir Park because there had been allegations made towards Andy that he had links to the other side in Northern Ireland. So I linked that to myself. When I came out of Fir Park one day, the car was covered in ice except someone had written ‘utter pish’ on my motor. That didn’t happen. But it might have.

“Tommy did call my career ‘11 years of pure s****.’ He really did say that. Apparently if he had taken all the s**** I’d given that football club, we would need all the chimney stacks at Ravenscraig to keep it.

“To be fair, that’s a good line. By the way, after that he told me I was still in his plans!”

One of the reasons Gahagan works so well is because he wasn’t a glamorous name and he makes the most of that. He is an actor as much as a gag-man. His use of language is colourful but offence is taken not given, and it’s only words. He can be booked two years in advance of the gig.

“I did a dinner with Denis Law once who is well spoken and not one for profanity. He is a hero of mine and asked me if I wanted some advice. He told me to think about swearing a bit more!”