Scott Nisbet summed up the ordeal he has been through since being diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer five years ago pretty succinctly during a lengthy chat about his entertaining, surprising and searingly honest new autobiography Red, White and True earlier this week.

“My body has taken a bit of a kicking,” said the former Rangers defender down the telephone from Lanzarote, where he has been running his football academy since way back in 2006.

That, though, has by no means been a new experience for Nisbet. It becomes obvious as you turn the pages of his compelling memoir that he had to deal with and overcome his fair share of hardship to scale the dizzying heights that he did during his playing career. It is also clear he has suffered some savage blows in his life in general.

He was never a cossetted Louis Vuitton washbag-wielding member of a pro-youth set-up at a Premiership club as a kid. No, he very much graduated from the school of hard knocks. Literally as well as metaphorically.

There is an amusing passage early on in his new book...