JOHN McBeth is a large man who wears a suit and spectacles and has short, silver hair in a sensible cut. In four years as president of the SFA he never had much to say for himself when it came to dealing with the media. McBeth's ingrained distrust of journalists, and his reputation for being an empty vessel when it came to interesting quotes, meant that he and the Scottish press cohabited without speaking to each other. As it turns out, that may have been our loss.

McBeth was not wearing an ammunition belt when he sat down with us on Hampden's sixth floor the other day, but he was not short of grenades to lob around and all of them were verbal. The man who will become the British vice-president of Fifa next weekend was in the mood to throw out one incendiary comment after another. His thoughts on the English? "The rest of the world hates their guts." Quite a remark from someone who conceded that he would have to "adjust" to be nicer to England now that he is their representative within Fifa too.

And how about his view that a sense of fair play exists in Britain but "as soon as you hit Africa it's a slightly different kettle of fish". In case another part of the planet felt left out: "I presume the Caribbean is much the same." Meanwhile, Fifa president Sepp Blatter is a "tricky customer". There might be some fun over all of this when McBeth first takes a seat with Fifa's executive committee within its extravagant new headquarters in Zurich.

Blatter arms himself with something more substantial than a pea-shooter when it comes to dealing with dissidents. McBeth will either be silenced once he gets there or else become far more discreet than he was in the familiar surroundings of Hampden. If he fires off scattergun opinions when he gets to Zurich, Blatter's fiefdom, Scotland's new man in Fifa might find that his feet don't touch the ground.

McBeth is an unexpected and unlikely firebrand, not least because he claims not to have wanted a foothold in Fifa in the first place. The four British associations always get one of the seven Fifa vice-presidential posts between them and Scotland's prospects seemed remote when David Will of Brechin announced his retirement after 17 years in the position. The FA's Geoff Thompson wanted it and so did Jim Boyce of Northern Ireland, but the British four votes cancelled each other out and McBeth snuck through the procedure to win. There was a little more guile to this than he is prepared to let on, but McBeth claimed to have won by default.

"I went down there and I was on the plane thinking, what in God's name am I going to London for?' We'd had it for 17 years with David Will, so it wouldn't be a Scot again. The two men touting were Geoff Thompson of England and Jim Boyce of Northern Ireland. To put it mildly, they made a balls of it and I wandered through the middle."

McBeth will officially become a Fifa vice-president on Friday but will be in Glasgow, attending the annual general meeting in his last act as an SFA office bearer, rather than Zurich. He will not last as long in the job as Will - who was opinionated and critical of Blatter, but more circumspect in how and to whom he was talking - but, while he is there, he must attempt to preserve the status quo of British status and representation among the permanent vice-presidents. There are those, notably Blatter's powerful ally Jack Warner of CONCACAF, who have tried to erode Britain's influence.

Warner has been embroiled in the sort of corruption allegations which have hung over Fifa since Blatter's presidential reign began. The Trinidad and Tobago FA president has been accused of making vast sums from selling World Cup tickets, with Fifa then alleged to have suppressed a report, which exposed his behaviour. Being prominent within Fifa amounts to a life of privilege and excess: generous expense accounts, black Mercedes, private jets, top restaurants and hotels and, for some, ticket rackets and kickbacks.

McBeth has asked Will about what he should expect and who to trust - "he's a good lawyer, he doesn't give much away" - but has learned more from a website and controversial book, Foul, by the investigative journalist Andrew Jennings. His work has likened Fifa to a cesspool of corruption with Blatter as the biggest floater. "There's an inquiry as to where Jennings' information is leaking out from. But they shouldn't be doing anything that isn't transparent anyway. I'm looking forward to finding out about it.

"I've got to try and stay true to my beliefs and hope I don't get seduced into it, which is always a big problem when you're going into a different lifestyle. David Will had a go at Mr Blatter and was one of the few that survived it.

"If you come across corruption I think you've got to expose it. Let's use the Jack Warner situation where he controls 35 Fifa votes. I can only think that Blatter must realise that 35 votes is an important block if he wants to stay as the president of FIFA: I've got to keep those votes on my side'. It's a very political thing. I think one's got to do your duty and get involved and find out. If I walked away from it you'd never find out. You'd never know.

"I know Blatter. I've dealt with him for the last 10 years on the International FA Board. He's a consummate politician, he switches from one language to another and invariably, if you question him on the language he was speaking in, he says that's not quite what I meant, I meant something else'. He's a tricky customer. I suppose anyone in that position has to be because you're dealing with people who, to put it politely, have a totally different code of ethics.

"By and large the four British countries know what fair play is and we know when we're stepping out of line. We all have an understanding. But as soon as you hit Africa it's a slightly different kettle of fish. They're poor nations and they want to grab what they can. It's something we have to look at. I presume the Caribbean is much the same, they just come at it in a different way. I think the British have an attitude of fair play but sometimes the British Empire didn't play fair on every country and that's coming back on us.

"I'll have to adjust to working on behalf of all the British associations and be much kinder to the English. I try to keep telling them that their notion of themselves is unbelievable. The rest of the world hates their guts. For instance, with Mr Warner, the English are over there spending a lot of money on women's football and refereeing where he would happily cut their throats. They don't realise that's going on. It's the old Empire stuff. For the ones that were under the Empire, it's payback time."

McBeth will hand the SFA presidency to George Peat on Friday having discovered he needed "the hide of a rhinoceros" to survive in the position. That may seem flimsy protection once he lands in Zurich, especially if he is true to his word and wields his tongue as a weapon against the corrupt.