I would never put something into print that I didn't believe to be true. That's the nature of the business: conflict

No-one, no matter how great and powerful, is exempt if he feels there is a justification for it. Sir David Murray, Dermot Desmond and Gordon Strachan are among those who have experienced his virtually patented brand of trenchant criticism. So, what chance did Scott McDonald have recently? None, apparently. Provan, in demanding more fitness from the little Australian striker, observed acerbically: "He was as sharp as a billiard ball and looked as if he was towing a caravan!"

By meeting the Sky and Radio Clyde pundit on a Monday morning, I'm taking no chances. Tension, theoretically, should be at its lowest point. Yet he quickly dismantles that contention, inferring that this is the day his home telephone occasionally has more callers than a line into the Samaritans; when those he has excoriated tend to exact their revenge on a highly personal basis.

We're far from the furnace of recrimination today, however. Or so I imagine. Ensconced in a cafe bar in Gourock, looking over the Firth of Clyde, however, it seems my companion can resist anything but temptation. He is wondering why the council has all but forgotten this splendidly scenic ferry port and poured its fiscal resources instead into nearby Greenock and Port Glasgow. Provan certainly has the authority to criticise the planners. This is home turf for him. He was born here 52 years ago.

This minor rant behind him, he becomes so relaxed you can imagine him lying on a hammock under an azure sky. It is a rare interlude of relaxation. He is an emotional person and you know that somewhere round the corner, there are dark clouds intent on engulfing him. When they arrive, you can forget all the bombast that comes wrapped in News of the World paper. Davie Provan, the wordsmith-cum-sword-smith, has tears in his eyes.

"I lost my dad five years ago next August," he says. "He was a huge influence on my life, I miss him every day. The strange thing is that he never ever told me that I was doing well, even when I played for Scotland. Oh, I knew he was proud of me, but he was never really demonstrative about it. Maybe it's this Calvinist thing, the Scottish thing whereby you're not really encouraged to express your feelings. I mean, we don't show our feelings like the Latins do; we're not as tactile and we don't really show each other the love "If I got a compliment off my dad, I knew I'd earned it. I think that kind of attitude prevails or certainly prevailed in football. The old-time managers would never let you get carried away. I think my dad was like that. He wouldn't like to think that me or my older brother Roddy would ever get above our stations in life. Roddy was the clever one, the one who got the university degree in electrical engineering. Whereas, I flunked out of school after my Highers. My dad maybe thought I got things too easy through football."

Provan pauses as if a further collection of his memories is required. That pause is heavy with emotion. "Obviously, the money wasn't what it is now, but it was good enough. I was fortunate in that I never had to graft. When I think of the work my dad did. He was a fireman in the railways. Now that was real graft, working with those big, long shovels on the steam trains. He worked three shifts, just grafting all his life.

"Once people are gone, they're gone. There are times you wish you could bring them back for even an hour. He was 79; he had a swelling of the aorta, the main artery of the heart. There was a bubble in it, basically. I think it's called an aneurysm. So he had been living with this for a long time and he knew it was liable to go. The only blessing was that it happened very suddenly.

"It occurred in front of my mum. She had to watch it. I still remember I was on the Kingston Bridge when I got the call. Mum told me that Dad had collapsed. The medical people were there, but here was me stuck in the middle of the bridge in a traffic jam. By the time I got down to Gourock he was dead. I only hope that I managed to give him some pay-back before he died. I tried to spoil him. If I was away on a foreign trip, I'd bring him back cigars or a decent bottle of whisky or brandy. But I don't believe you can ever repay that debt. Certainly, what my mum and dad did for me, I could never repay."

Having absorbed and appreciated the warmth and depth of those words, I am attempting to further assess the man sitting across the table from me. He is certainly bold and pugnacious but, as his remarks about his parents suggest, he has been equipped with compassion and a duty of care. I want to know more about him.

Provan says he lives and thrives on the present and the future, and is almost disinclined to peer into dusty recesses of the past. It's not so much that he's intimidated by nostalgia, it's just that he believes too many players are stuck in a time warp, whereby all they want to talk about is the old days. He has no wish to clamber into that capsule. "I can remember them fondly enough," he says, "but I don't dwell on them."

He does alight, albeit briefly, on Ron "Chopper" Harris. Now this man, you might remember, occasionally indicated that he would be more comfortable conducting business in an abattoir than on a football field. The former Chelsea full-back certainly incurred the Provan wrath recently when he intimated that most wingers were cowards by nature. "Listen," my companion advises, "playing with your back to goal against guys who were hatchet men, well, you don't last 10 minutes if you are a coward. Look at guys like George Best, Jimmy Johnstone and Willie Henderson and look at the punishment they took. Cowards, indeed!"

Provan's unfortunate professional story must be familiar to most people, so only a brief reference to the past is required before we move on to more relevant matters. He was 29 years of age when he stepped into a consultant's room to be told that his football career with Celtic was over; ME had sucked all his energy, obliged him to sleep sometimes 16 hours a day and dismantled his professional life. But, just as he was staring into the black hole of the unknown, along came Radio Clyde and then Sky Sport to throw lifelines. His newspaper columns began once he was established in the lifeboat.

And so we arrive at the immediate past and the present, the rows and the rants, and the times he has tormented some elements of the football community with his bold, almost bellicose, opinions. I draw his attention to an interview I did with former British Lion John Beattie for Radio Four's Archive Hour programme, When Seagulls Follow the Trawler. Beattie revealed that once he'd written a throwaway line about Kenny Logan's love life which led to complications with the Scottish squad, none of whom would then speak to him. Beattie resolved there and then that this would be the sum total of his indiscretions and that he would discipline himself against any further such revelations.

I wonder if Provan could ever be similarly constrained. His look gives me an immediate answer. "Hey, if something has to be said, then I'll say it. But I'm a columnist now and I don't have to deal with people. There was a time when I was a reporter working for Sky when I had to deal with managers and players. And then it was more difficult. You'd write or say something that offended people and they'd exercise their right not to talk to you. Oh, you know how it works. It's a form of censorship; that's how the business works.

"I'm now in the fortunate position where I'm not having to deal with these people day in, day out, and therefore I can give my opinion with impunity. It's a lot easier, put it that way. A lot of journalists can't give their frank opinion for fear of the censorship I'm talking about. They'll not get what they want from a manager, or the manger will ban them, or withdraw favours. Basically, the media is a grace-and-favour system. In effect, it's: You play ball with me and I'll give you what you're looking for'."

Surely, though, Provan possesses a grace-and-favour system of his own? Does he place any restrictions on himself regarding what he says and who he says it about? And what about pals? Do they have a special dispensation? His response prompts a sharp intake of breath in me. "I think I'm fortunate in that I don't have any pals in the game. I don't really mix with people. I'm on the outside and I think it's easier to write a column if you're not compromised. I don't get favours from people and I don't need favours, so there's no form of payback.

"I don't have to go back to this system whereby some journalists, if you like, are in the pockets of some chairmen and some managers. They're compromised and I think that makes a journalist's job all the more difficult. It's not a position I've chosen to adopt, it's just evolved.

"Look, there are people still working in the game, such as Roy Aitken, Alex McLeish and some of my contemporaries, I wouldn't call them bosom buddies. I suppose I'd call them acquaintances. I suppose that's as near as I would get to saying I have friends in the game. I don't mix with people from football. Basically, all my friends are at the local golf club. I'd good buddies in the dressing room, Frank McGarvey, Tommy Burns and Johnny Doyle were all good pals, but once I left football I didn't really maintain any close friendships. I don't know if that's unusual. Maybe it is."

It certainly is, but back to business. Provan has mentioned the name Burns. Didn't he once fall out with him when the latter was assistant to Berti Vogts with Scotland, and Provan was attempting to have the German despatched back to the Fatherland? Provan responds with a smile. "Once? I think I had a few blasts off Tommy because of my relationship, or lack of it, with Vogts. Any time I saw him after that, though, there was always a handshake. Oh, Tommy believed in him I don't know if he believed in him latterly, but he was certainly loyal to him right to the end."

Provan, up until this moment, has taken the strangely obstinate stance that being a columnist seems to immunise him against confrontation. Now he joins what he might very well refer to as the real world. "I suppose one of the drawbacks is that it brings you into conflict with people."

So let's name the names: Murray is called Pot-Kettle; Desmond is dismissed as smug; Mark Hateley is accused of blinkered bias towards Rangers; and Strachan of never doing contrition. So, Provan isn't intimidated by confrontation? At first, he says: "I think people take football far too seriously. I mean, it's no' the real world." And then comes the admission. "I don't lose sleep over falling out with people. That's the way you've got to be."

How is his relationship with Murray and Desmond, for instance? His response is that there is no relationship with these men, which is fairly explicit in itself. "I think I've interviewed Desmond twice. I don't remember him being around the club when I was there and I was there for 10 years."

Let's return to Strachan. "I've interviewed him a couple of times, once a sit-down for Sky. He was perfectly hospitable to me and I've got great admiration for him as a footballer. He was a wonderful footballer. And you can't argue with his (managerial) record. If I have any problem with Gordon, it's that I don't think he behaves like a Celtic manager all the time in front of the microphone. Having done pitch-side interviews for Sky for long enough, I don't know how Stuart Lovell at Setanta manages to keep his temper with Gordon.

"He talks about respect and about people not showing him enough of it, but I think there are times when he could show respect. That's my take on it. I don't have a relationship with him as such. I don't have a working relationship with him, either, nor do I require one."

Provan's face lights up mischievously as he says he's had no response so far from Hateley, whom he slaughtered for saying that Kris Boyd should be sold by Rangers. Nor would he wish for one. "Maybe I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alleyway. He's a lot bigger than me!"

But, in the end, it's his stance towards Celtic that tells you about his impartiality. I ask him if people expect him to look on the club with some degree of tolerance. "I like to see Celtic win. They're still my club and they always will be. But it wouldn't stop me criticising them if I felt it had to be said. But nobody has the franchise on feeling affection for Celtic. I like to see them win the right way.

"The club has changed greatly, you know. I think the modern-day Celtic plc, post Fergus McCann, has lost something. I don't know quite what it is. I couldn't explain it to you. But it has lost something. I know when the families were in charge that it wasn't run on particularly successful business lines, but it was a great club to be part of. There was much more of a personal touch about it then. I think there was much more of an affinity between the supporters and the club then than there is now."

What about those people who accuse him of being spiteful? For once he looks taken aback. "I hope I'm not. Is that some people's perceptions ?" On the web, perhaps. "Oh, I don't go near the message boards or near the web. I've never ever referred to them because you've got a good idea what's going to be there. I'd rather lift the lid of the sewer, to be honest."

Provan is consulting his watch and preparing to leave his home town where so many of his memories belong. No neuroses today. His wife Fiona is waiting for him to take her to lunch. The dog is at liberty to bark if it so desires. Just before he goes, though, I need to know one thing: assuming Strachan doesn't do contrition, how about Provan? Does the word "sorry" ever sit on his lips?

"I think I'm capable of apologising if I know I've been wrong. But I would never put something into print that I didn't believe to be true. That's the nature of the business: conflict. You've got to have an independent mind, you know. I was brought up in a house where you were expected to support Rangers and vote Labour. I signed for Celtic and voted for Maggie three times! So I suppose I've always been a bit of a non-conformist."

The hugely likeable pundit -I'm still stunned by his admission that he has no real friends in football - leaves me with a handshake that is warm and firm. It's only Monday, but I suspect his mind is already embracing Thursday.