THEY say The Queen goes around thinking the world smells of fresh paint, not realising that everywhere she goes has just been spruced up for her arrival.

Around Aberdeen their idea of royalty extends to include a monarch who reigned locally between 1978 and 1986. The city yesterday had that little charge of electricity and chatter it gets whenever Sir Alex Ferguson is back in town.

In an upmarket hotel on the road between Pittodrie and Balmoral he did the honours for the Scottish Football Association at the draw for the fourth round of the Scottish Cup. The whole event could not have been more stage-managed and controlled if it had been Barack Obama standing beside Alan McRae of Cove Rangers for the ceremony. Everything was being broadcast live on Sky Sports News which meant the dozens of us in a large function suite were reduced to the role of extras: told when to shush, told how many minutes and then seconds were left until we were going live to the nation. David Tanner, the unflappable presenter, made sure he was in you-know-who's good books by wearing a red tie.

Fergie is bigger than Obama along the North Deeside Road. The last time he had anything to do with the Scottish Cup it was 1986 and he was gripping the thing by the neck and waving it from a balcony of Aberdeen Town House for the fourth time in five years. Yesterday the room was well-populated by plenty of weel-kent faces from back then - SFA vice-president McRae is one of his old pals, Craig Brown was there for a long blether - while others showed up simply to catch a glimpse of him. A couple of locally based Manchester United fans had done some impressive detective work to discover where and when he would be there, and were rewarded with a private audience at the end.

While United were preparing to go in against Real Sociedad in the Champions League, Ferguson was pulling Culter and Fraserburgh and Auchinleck Talbot's names out of a bowl. First out were two of his old clubs, Falkirk versus Rangers. He knew who most of the room were waiting for but after 11 pairings there was still no sign of them. "Are Aberdeen in here?" By the time they were down to just four games left to come out the room was readying itself for the drama of Aberdeen-Celtic. "It's getting exciting now. . ." But no, they got Partick Thistle. Celtic were sent to Tynecastle.

Ferguson saw his old team put four unanswered goals past Thistle at Pittodrie on Monday night. But he watched it on television, not in person. "I was very impressed with them. Derek [McInnes] has got them scoring goals but the main thing is he has got them extremely hard to beat. They are not losing goals and that is always important, especially if you want to go all the way in the cup. I can see no reason they can't do it. Derek is doing great job here. He was unlucky at Bristol City when he was in England. You can see his ability in the job he is doing now. I think all managers have potential but it's important to give them time to realise it."

He thought Partick-Aberdeen and Hearts-Celtic the two most attractive ties. There was a word, too, about Rangers. "I think Ally has done a great job there. He has stabilised the club and you can see the improvements from last year. They are on a good unbeaten run this season and they will go to Falkirk with a lot of confidence." He was unmoved by the mild furore about the SFA having already announced Parkhead as the cup final while Hampden is out of commission. "It's the right choice. It's great that Glasgow has the Commonwealth Games and to support that the SFA had to surrender Hampden Park. Celtic Park holds 60,000, even more than Hampden, so I don't think anyone could complain about the final being there."

There were questions from the media for eight minutes. On his terms, of course. The instructions were clear on the press invite. "Please note: Sir Alex Ferguson will conduct a short, all-in media conference on his reaction to the draw and his cup experiences only."

He did take a question about whether Scotland might be producing talented young players again: "There is a determination and purpose regarding youth football in Scotland at the moment. If you give a kid a ball at an early age, the habits last a lifetime. That's how it was when I was a kid. You always had a ball at your feet. That's been missing in the last few decades."

One Irish journalist had been on the road since 4am to make it to Aberdeen in time for these morsels from the great man. He was there because Ferguson will be in Dublin next week for the latest night of his sell-out book promotion tour.

Last night the faithful rolled in to Aberdeen Music Hall. The Dons are mentioned only seven times in the 402 pages of "My Autobiography" but they didn't care about that. In Aberdeen he will always be the man who rewrote history.