MARCUS Alton waited hours to meet the great man, interviewed him numerous times as a journalist and now he has written a book about Brian Clough.

The BBC journalist tells many tales, tributes and paints memories in his latest book, 'The Day I Met Brian Clough', which he shared at a book signing at Waterstones, Derby, last night.

He said he remembers the first time he interviewed the former Derby County manager at a book signing and how nervous he was.

He said: "You never knew what to expect from him. He was unpredictable and that was the magic of the man.

"I remembered hearing his voice when he came in to the bookshop, which made me even more nervous, and I heard him saying to his assistant that not everything had gone particularly well that morning and I hoped the interview would not go badly.

"But it went very well and he was on great form. I was always in awe of him – luckily for me I think he liked me."

Mr Alton also recalled meeting him for the first time as a fan, where he was first in the queue at 5.50am for a supermarket book signing.

He said: "Some people say never meet your hero because it never lives up to your expectation but that was never the case with Cloughie.

"He spoke to me and my wife for ten minutes or so even though other people were waiting and that was what was so special about him.

"He could talk to everybody and be interested in their lives and people appreciated that. I came away absolutely elated."

Mr Alton said the idea for his book came from the Clough tribute website he set up.

He said: "There were not only so many tributes left on the website for him over the years but also memories from people who had met him so I decided to put them into one collection.

"I wanted it to read so that on one page you had Gary Lineker talking about him and on the next memories from a fan – it's a diverse range of people who contributed."

Mr Alton said his favourite Cloughie story was from Hartlepools striker Terry Bell, who decided to take revenge on a team-mate for cutting his football socks. "He told me he was going to get his own back and decided to get a bucket of water and hide on the roof of the changing room and waited for the signal to pour the water," he added.

"But he ended up pouring it over Brian who was not wearing his tracksuit but a suit because he was going to a funeral."

Mr Alton said royalties from the book would go to the Brian Clough fund.