Donald Findlay QC, the best criminal lawyer in Scotland, a passionate Rangers supporter, and a former vice-chairman of the club, is at last a rehabilitated man. When Findlay spectacularly fell from grace four years ago over his sectarian singing controversy, he famously confessed later that he had contemplated suicide. Yesterday, I found him contentedly puffing his pipe, his demons exorcised, his life restored to kinder peace.

We're in another Old Firm weekend and, though he has much to say about the state of Rangers, Findlay, still an Ibrox season-ticket holder, will not be at Parkhead tomorrow.

''I think my days of visiting Celtic Park are over,'' he says, chortling at past indiscretions, though potentially it would be no laughing matter.

I was intrigued to meet this impressive, lauded, vulnerable, and once very disgraced man. The complex area of bigotry, and what constitutes a bigot, was too irresistible a subject to avoid exploring with him. On that score there is an irony about Findlay, with his sharp advocate's mind, frankly not always convincing or even consistent in his arguments. I finally conclude, though, he is innocent of being a bigot.

We couldn't get to any of that, though, before Findlay, the ex-Rangers director and once vice-chairman, laid into the club and its current state with quiet venom.

On the brink of tomorrow's do-or-die Scottish Cup tie at Celtic Park, he regards Rangers as being in a state, with past sins of the club's board and its former chairman, David Murray, now being wretchedly paid for on the field.

''I believe Rangers have lost direction, and ultimately, that it is the board which is responsible,'' he said.

''One of the main jobs of any football club board is to find the finance for the team's manager, but at Rangers, unfortunately, over a period of time an awful lot of money was spent on players who weren't worth it. The upshot is that Alex McLeish and the team are suffering, and it is the board's responsibility.

''In every walk of life you pay for what you've done, and Rangers now have this very significant debt which is limiting their planning. A consequence is that McLeish is left with a group of players who are not good enough to satisfy the hopes and aspirations of the supporters. Rangers are currently relying on too many players whose best days are behind them.

''There is a growing conflict between the fans and the club. The success of Rangers in the past was always built on the togetherness of the club and its fans, but not now. I was at a dinner recently at which I heard the present Rangers chairman talk about the club being 'a family'. This is bollocks. It is patently not the case at present.

''The fans don't feel at one with the club; on the contrary, they feel excluded. You know as well as I do that who owns what shares in any club is not the point: football supporters always believe that the club is their club. This is the bond that Rangers have now lost.''

I asked Findlay if he had much contact with David Murray, the former Rangers chairman, with whom he worked before he left Ibrox in disgrace in 1999. He said that he didn't, but that there were no hard feelings. Findlay does, though, blame the latter years under Murray for the mess the club now finds itself in.

''The best example of the wasted money, which now limits the team in terms of the debt, is obvious,'' says Findlay. ''Either back then or since, I never met anyone who felt that Tore Andre Flo was worth (pounds) 12m. It was just extraordinary. Maybe (pounds) 6m or (pounds) 7m, yes, but (pounds) 12m!

''I believe some transfers should have been over-ruled. If I'd been on the Rangers board at the time I like to think I'd have said, 'I'm sorry, I just don't think we can justify this.' I

think the state of Rangers is a collective responsibility, and that of the Rangers board in particular.

''This is the poorest Rangers team since the days before Graeme Souness in 1986, there is no question. You would have to say this team is on a par with teams in those awful years prior to the Souness revolution. There are one or two players of the right quality, but too many who are not. Players who are past their prime, as Rangers are now relying on, cannot possibly reach the same levels of commitment and motivation they once did.''

So to tomorrow. Findlay

was once famous for the contempt he showed towards the home of Celtic. And his antics were all part of a complex debate about bigotry, sectarianism, and what is right and wrong in human behaviour in such situations.

I'm afraid for a good half-hour of debate yesterday, the two of us ducked and dived before each other's arguments.

''Oh, I used to love going to Celtic Park,'' Findlay confirmed. ''They used to have this lovely mahogany fascia at the front of the directors box, and I'd walk in, my hands in my pockets, looking around as if to say, ''God, here we are in this place again'' and then put my feet up on the fascia. The Celtic punters in front of the box would go nuts. It was all great fun. A total wind-up.''

Yes, but what about the chain of cause-and-effect in all this? Findlay says he enjoyed these ''wind-ups'' in the hostile atmosphere of the Old Firm, that they were merely fun. We know, however, that down the line these wind-ups lead to aggression, and aggression to harm, and harm - too often to contemplate in recent years - has meant stabbings and killings in Glasgow.

In such a context, is any ''wind-up'' ever justified?

''I don't think there's an easy answer to that,'' he replied. ''The two issues [healthy rivalry and dire consequences] are linked and yet they are also separate. I still adhere to the position that, at the end of it all, it is just a bloody game, and that if you can't have fun and wind-ups at matches, then what is the point in the game at all?'

Well, in the past 12 years, I told him, there are estimated to have been as many as nine or 10 fatalities, linked directly or indirectly, to an Old Firm game. Indeed, on the same night that Findlay was filmed singing The Sash after the Rangers Scottish Cup win over Celtic in May, 1999, a Celtic supporter, Thomas McFadden, was killed in a fight involving Rangers supporters.

This is certainly the argument of the anti-bigotry group Nil By Mouth: that the idiom of bigotry is inextricably linked down the line to tragedy.

Findlay was ambivalent. On the one hand, he said: ''In these cases [of killings] you may be making assumptions about sectarian motives that are not justified. I mean, there are things going on all over Europe after football matches. You should see it in Italy, for a start.'' Moments later, though, he seemed more consensual about the connection.

''Look, if I said to you there was no connection, then you would rightly criticise me for ignoring the evidence of my own eyes,'' he said. ''The only point I'm trying to make is, if two people become engaged in violence on the night of an Old Firm match, and one is a Rangers fan and the other a Celtic fan, is it necessarily the case that the violence occurs because they are on opposite sides of a [football] divide? That's my only note of caution. It is too easy to lay it all at the door of the football teams.''

Seeming to soften even more, Findlay added: ''Both clubs do have a responsibility to take out of the rivalry anything that is encouraging of violence, however indirect it might be.'' Tellingly, he added: ''That's why today, if I were to go back to Celtic Park, would I put my feet up on the mahogany fascia? No.''

He is impressively and authentically contrite, I found, about his Sash-singing antics of four years ago. Findlay said to me - and I believe him - that there isn't a trace of a bigot in him. My only point in response was that, unfortunately, he certainly acted like one.

''Yes, I think that's right, and it's something I've come to realise over the years,'' he

confessed. ''I always thought these songs were just daft fun. When the furore broke a colleague said to me: 'Donald, what's all this about? You are one of the most tolerant people I know.' But I think you're right about how it made me look. What I failed to take into account is how people perceived you, and how one allows oneself to be perceived.

''I don't know how many times I've said it: I don't give a rat's ass about religion. Ever since I was old enough to understand, I couldn't believe in God. Religion, to me, is illogical. If you are a Protestant, a Catholic, a Sunni or a Shi'ite, I've never cared. All my life all I've ever wanted to do is help people. . .''