BRIAN Dempsey can vividly recall his first meeting with Fergus McCann, a clandestine appointment in London around 18 months before the so-called rebels won the battle to wrest control of Celtic in 1994. "He was a difficult man," was Dempsey's initial impression. "He was uncompromising, obdurate, stubborn, implacable and unmovable. I've never come across a character like him, and I've met a few in my day." There was little chemistry between the two men from the outset. When, after the takeover had been completed, Dempsey invited McCann to his house for a working dinner, he could only look on in astonishment as his guest, without warning, lay down on the carpet and embarked on a series of stretching exercises. The bhoy from Croy, who according to Dempsey once ordered Cardinal Winning out of his office, was, and remains, a one-off. Thursday will mark the 10th anniversary of McCann's arrival at Parkhead. His money saved Celtic from going into receivership, but he left Scotland almost five-and-a-half years later with a £40m return from his £9 million investment. Such a result, at a time when other clubs were starting to run up massive debts, can only be viewed as the footballing equivalent of turning water into wine. Yet, McCann's determination to squeeze a huge profit out of Celtic did not endear him to all. Dempsey looks back at his reign with some bitterness. And despite helping to save the club, building a hugely impressive new stadium, and leaving Celtic in a healthy financial position, he was embarrassingly booed by supporters when he unfurled the Scottish League flag in August 1998. Although some of his financial prudence was undone by later regimes, the Parkhead club are in a vastly healthier financial position today than their arch-rivals Rangers. "He laid the foundations of what Celtic are today," says one man who worked closely with McCann. "He fulfilled to the letter everything he said he would do. He said he would stay for five years, he'd build a new stadium and he'd sell his shares to the fans."

"When he left, the stadium was paid for, Celtic were earning £35m a year, and for the first time they were on a par with Rangers financially. Celtic have benefited in the second five years because they had that infrastructure in place even although it cost heartache and disputes. He wasn't appreciated at the time, hence the booing at the unfurling of the flag, but he was over in Scotland a few weeks ago and got a very warm reception. Time changes people's perception and I suspect if he unfurled the flag after this season's title he'd get a rousing ovation. Anybody with half a brain can see how the club has benefited." But even McCann's most ardent admirers would concede he was ruthless in pursuit of his aims. Former SFA chief executive Jim Farry was one of his many victims, being forced to resign following a protracted dispute over Jorge Cadete's registration. Nor did he suffer managers lightly, with Lou Macari, Tommy Burns and Wim Jansen all leaving the club during his reign. Glasgow businessman Dempsey - who, along with McCann and financer David Low, was among those most instrumental for ending the dynasty of the Kellys, Whites and Grants at Celtic - is scathing in his view of McCann's methods.

"For his first home game against Motherwell, Fergus didn't appear in the directors box until well after the kick-off because one of the turnstiles wasn't working fast enough in taking the fans' money," Dempsey remembers. "He was driven purely by money, nothing else - but he would tell you that himself. I thought we were changing something for the better, but the biscuit tin just became a calculator with lots more zeros. It was all about what was in it for an individual, instead of what was best for the club." Dempsey says he fell out with McCann for this reason, but those who speak for the former managing director say it was because Dempsey couldn't, or wouldn't, put up the £1m he had pledged at the time of the takeover. In any event, their relationship characterised the abrasive manner in which McCann ran the club. The wee man with the bunnet didn't come back to Glasgow from North America, where he had made his fortune, to be loved, but he did find love. He now lives in Massachusetts with his Scottish wife Elspeth, a lawyer, and their three young children. Typically, he is not in retirement and has founded a luxury bus company for businessmen travelling between Boston and New York. Like Jock Brown, who has also written about McCann in these pages, another former employee at Parkhead speaks highly of his reign and his incredible sense of purpose. Peter McLean headed up the club's public relations department for all but three months of McCann's tenure and was his first appointment. It wasn't the easiest of tasks, with Brown at odds with large sections of the media - some of which were incredibly hostile - and McCann unaware of what diplomacy meant.

"I've always found him a great guy to work for," says McLean who is still in regular contact with his former boss, "and most people who worked for him over a long period of time will say the same. He was very challenging, but incredibly supportive. If a cleaner had an issue with one of the star players, and the two of them ended up in the managing director's office, Fergus would listen to what both of them had to say - and if the cleaner was right, he'd back the cleaner. He always used to say, 'You never regret doing the right thing'." Why then, if McCann was so fair, did he make so many enemies? "His direct style of saying exactly what he thought shocked people and made a lot of them feel very, very uncomfortable," replies McLean. "Most people are guarded in what they say, but he called things exactly how he saw them. He was also prepared to stand up for what he saw as Celtic's best interests. He was involved in a number of court cases and to the best of my knowledge won every one." "When on March 4, 1994, he arrived and Celtic were on the verge of extinction, there was only a queue of one person prepared to buy the club. There was a secondary queue who were quite happy to let Celtic go bust and then pick it up. Fergus was the only one who was prepared to address the debt, the poor stadium, the weak team and everything else that surrounded Celtic at that time. He put £9.4m of his own money in. The club benefited more from Fergus than it ever did from his money because of his vision. Celtic were getting very low crowds at that time, and even the season spent at Hampden there were only about 28,000. Fergus had the vision of a 60,000-stadium which would be full every week. A lot of people said it was nonsense, yet he was proved absolutely right that there was a large support out there waiting to be brought back. He's still very much a Celtic supporter. In the 1960s he rarely missed a game. He checks their results on the internet and keeps in touch with what is going on."

Despite the one title win under Jansen, success on the park was elusive during the McCann years. It's fascinating to speculate how he and Martin O'Neill would have gelled. Dempsey and McLean, whose views of McCann are so different that the former owner might be two different people, again disagree on the matter. "I suspect they would have got on very well," says McLean. "Martin is a bright, intelligent, clear thinker, as is Fergus. Both fight strongly for what they believe in, but the logical conclusions they reach suggest it could have worked." Not so, maintains Dempsey. "Martin O'Neill would have had an impossible relationship with Fergus. They would have fallen out the minute Fergus lost control of what was happening. At that point Fergus would have started alienating him, no matter how successful he was on the pitch. That didn't matter to Fergus. And he would never have been given the amount of money he had at the start to sign players." The last word goes to Dempsey, who recalls an early conversation. "I said: 'This is not going to work - you can't come in here and do everything your own way.' He replied: 'I'm going to blow my brains out, and when I do that I want to make sure I go out with the right money.'" McCann, this unique, controversial, little character, did just that.