AT the age of 60 and with dodgy, creaking knees, Jackie McNamara recently played some of the best football of his life.

He was making tackles and hitting passes with his eyes shut. Okay, okay, he was drugged up to the eyeballs at the time and asleep, but even so. In his own head the class act they called Jackie The Red didn't put a foot wrong.

The doctor had given him a few Tramadol pills to ease the pain and help him rest after knee replacement surgery. Being pumped full of cortisone injections when he was a Celtic player in the 1970s eventually contributed to the onset of chronic arthritis and years of discomfort. One knee was replaced a few weeks ago and the other will go later in the year. "It's bloody sore. After the operation you've got to sleep with a pillow between your legs, like a pregnant woman. You have to lie on your back and I can't sleep that way. But then you take a Tramadol and you have these dreams. What a player I was once I've taken a Tramadol-"

McNamara does not reach quite the same playing level once he is awake and the drugs have worn off, but in every other way he is as entertaining and impressive now as he ever was in a fine playing career for Celtic and, particularly, Hibs. Drugs, politics, sex, cup finals: it all tumbles out of him over a couple of lattes in a coffee house he likes on Musselburgh High Street.

Only a couple of minutes' walk away is the boozer where he puts in a couple of days a week behind the bar, watching the racing channel with the old boys, swapping stories and having a laugh. It is the same pub, The Sportsman, he ran for 20 years with former team-mate Ralph Callachan but there are different owners now and he only helps out because he enjoys the craic. Then there are the days when he tends to his grandchildren, seven of them between 16 and seven, and others when he plays golf or even goes on holiday with his mates.

Around all of this he fits in two of his great pursuits: football and politics. It is about 35 years since Scottish newspapers reported as a "sensation" the fact that McNamara was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Heaven forbid that a footballer could be opinionated, forthright and bolshie, and McNamara was all three, to the extent Eddie Turnbull called him "Jackie The Red". Is he still into politics now? "Oh aye, of course. Every breath you take is political. I like to watch the political programmes although not Question Time, that's too contrived. I liked the banner when [Iain] Duncan Smith came here: 'We've got more pandas than Tory MPs in Scotland'. I love that humour."

It would be safe to say he did not exactly well up at the news of Margaret Thatcher's death. "It was Elvis Costello's lyrics, wasn't it? 'I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down'."

He was active in the Scottish Professional Footballers' Association long after his retirement in the mid-80s. Had he ever considered a proper career in politics? "Nah. Tommy Sheridan was wanting to get me involved. When Tommy was all over the tabloid headlines my youngest boy was listening to it on the radio. He phoned me and says 'da, they're saying at Tommy's trial there's a footballer involved-tell me it's no' you.' I said 'nah son, yer dad disnae share his birds with anyone-"

His political loyalties have been founded on a life-long conviction. With football it has been different. Originally he is from Possil and was first a Partick Thistle fan before developing a deep affinity with Hibs, not to mention gratitude to them for saving his career. Between 1976 and 1985 he was a cornerstone of Hibs' defence. He played only 43 times for Celtic between 1970 and '76, unable to properly establish himself in the era of Parkhead's Quality Street Kids. He took the hint when Jock Stein signed Ronnie Glavin to replace Davie Hay, having thought he would be the one to do so. The wit is razor sharp when it is put to him that tomorrow's William Hill Scottish Cup final is between two of his former clubs. "No, that would need to be Hibs against Celtic reserves.

"Actually Celtic was a great period for me. I played with half of the Lisbon Lions – that was when they dropped into the reserves – so that's bound to leave a mark on you. The frustration at Celtic was that I was getting pumped with cortisone. I've had massive problems with my knees. Most players from that era do. It's something that happened, I've got on with it, and I managed to have a career with Hibs. Thankfully Eddie Turnbull saw something in me. I failed a medical. I didn't know I was being swapped for the best player Hibs ever had, Pat Stanton." His wage increased from £40-a-week to £70.

People didn't bang on about Hibs' depressing Scottish Cup record back then but it has become a matter of slowly growing pain for them and comedy for Hearts. When he and Callaghan ran The Sportsman they had a picture of the 1902 cup-winning team in the bar. McNamara played when Hibs came closer to winning the cup than they have in 110 years; in the 1979 final they drew 0-0 with Rangers, then 0-0 in a replay, before losing the second replay 3-2 to an own goal. "We should have won it. We should have had a penalty. Big Peter McCloy pushed Colin Campbell as he tried to lob it over him and Colin wasn't clever – or was too honest – and he stayed up.

"I've converted the video to DVD and every time I see it I keep shouting 'penalty'." How did McNamara play? "I was man of the match." In which game? "I should have had it in all three-"

He is a Hibee although at various points in his life he has followed Dunfermline Athletic, Celtic, Wolves, Aberdeen, Falkirk and Partick, and now he goes to watch Dundee United. His allegiances are dictated by wherever his boy, Jackie, has played or managed. Jackie, now the manager at Tannadice, is the only one of his three sons to go into football, contrary to what his dad expected.

"I was surprised he got into it because he saw younger boys who hadnae even played a youth or reserve game being disrespectful when legends like Danny McGrain were coaching them. He saw that first hand. Maybe Danny didnae see or hear it but Jackie did and he thought 'Christ, if they can be like that to a legend-' Back then I remember him telling me he didn't fancy coaching. I'm proud of him."

On Sunday, Hibs will play their 10th final since last winning the cup. Last season's Hibs team jarred with him – too many players on loan – and he could not bring himself to go against Hearts. Through the cracks in his fingers he watched it in the living room of his holiday home in Spain. "I said 'I'm no' going back to watch six or seven loan players, I just cannae do that'. I wasn't confident. It was a derby final but I was closer to Ian Black than our midfield was, and that was me 1500 miles away. My big mate George Stewart, my captain in the '79 final, his boy came over from Australia, flew back for it. Ralph flew back from Cyprus. It was hellish. Oh My God. I did think 'I should be going'. But I said to Ralph 'nah, I'm not flying back'."

He was at Hampden 11 months later when they flirted with another cup shambles, 3-0 down at half-time in a semi-final with Falkirk. "If a fourth goal had gone in that would have been it, curtains. But I stayed for it. I wasn't one of the fans who left early. I wish they had them on CCTV, the ones who left shouldnae get a cup final ticket. If the players had downed tools – and thankfully they didn't – they wouldn't be in the cup and wouldn't be in the final."

His former Hibs team-mate, Paul Kane, is running a supporters' bus on Sunday – "any way Kano can make a shilling-" – and McNamara has booked his seat. It didn't cross my mind to ask if he had kept a Tramadol in reserve, just to guarantee he will see the sort of cup final Hibees dream about.