Interview Jeff Winter: Mary Hannigan talks to a former referee who faced the wrath and 'arrogance' of Alex Ferguson

You take one look at him and you wonder how any footballer or manager was ever brave enough to shower him with abuse. Standing at over six feet tall, with shoulders as broad as his Middlesbrough accent and a pair of eyes capable of delivering a glare that would wither the faint-hearted, Jeff Winter is the possessor of a physique that's more Desperate Dan than Pierluigi Collina. "The Stockton Lard Arse," Newcastle fans dubbed him.

Desperate Dan, of course, was the world's strongest man, capable of lifting a cow with one hand. There were times, Winter concedes, he was tempted to lift Premiership footballers with one hand and remove them from the field of play. "I was often asked if I was ever tempted to punch a player," he laughs, "and I said I would wait 'til the last game of my career to do it. But, as it turned out, that was the 2004 FA Cup final so it wasn't really the right time or place. Mind you, I would have sold a lot more books if I'd done it."

A referee for 25 years, 18 of them in professional football, by the time Winter retired he had taken charge of over 2,000 games. Plenty of material, then, for that book, Who's The B*****d In The Black?. And yes, he admits, it was a chant he regularly directed at the man in the middle when he was "a teenage bloody yob on the terraces" at Middlesbrough's Ayresome Park, half a mile from where he was born in 1955.

He matured, though, went into banking, and then, "accidentally", fell into refereeing. By the time he retired he was one of the English game's most recognisable officials. Why, oh why, did he want to become a referee? "For the joy of being involved in professional football at the highest level," he says. "I could never have played football at that level . . . I was crap."

Now he's retired, when he can find the time between his media work (Sky Sports, the Sun, a local radio show) and after-dinner speaking, he's back to being a supporter. "I had 25 years as a referee, I loved every minute of it, but once it was over, it was over." Having reached 48 he had no option but to retire, "that's the rule so there's no point complaining about it", but, he insists, he doesn't miss refereeing and he's revelling in the freedom to express his opinions on footballing issues. He uses that freedom "to put his side of things" in his book, not least about the most exasperating episode of his career, when he was pitted against "the might of Alex Ferguson and Manchester United".

Winter was the fourth official at the game between Newcastle and United at St James Park in 2003. Incensed by the refusal of the assistant referee, Russell Booth, to flag for a foul when Andy O'Brien, the last defender, appeared to bring down Ryan Giggs, Ferguson screamed "you ****ing cheating b*****d" at Booth. Winter called referee Uriah Rennie over to the touchline, told him what Ferguson had said, and the United manager was sent from the dugout. "You're a ****ing joke," Ferguson twice shouted at Winter as they later walked up the tunnel.

"And so, you were taking on the manager of the biggest club in the world, and their power. They even had a barrister at the disciplinary hearing! I'm actually a magistrate so I'm a little bit aware of courtroom procedures, but had I not have been, well . . . they were there to discredit me. If it had been Chester they'd probably have taken the fine and walked away, because it was Manchester and Fergie being Fergie - you saw with the Coolmore situation, he digs in, he won't give up.

"He'd got wind of me doing a fly-on-the-wall documentary about being a ref and he'd cleverly turned it into 'Winter stage-managing this to get some publicity'! So that's what went on, 'typical Winter trying to make a name for himself', and I'm thinking, 'it's there for the world to see'. It was on television, it wasn't a case of my word against his, it was on television!

"From the start of the hearing they talked about my documentary and how, from the outset, my attitude had been terrible, confrontational. Then they brought in a witness, their coach Mike Phelan who had been sat on the bench, and he said 'Jeff's normally alright, you can talk to him, but I don't know what was wrong with him that day. His attitude was just confrontational, I don't know if he'd had a bad night or personal problems'. I just wanted to stand up and scream. It was Dallas, it really was, it was JR. As I said in the book, Ferguson's arrogance just shone through, he just thought he was above the law.

"I must have been there for three hours. They dissected my evidence, line by line . . . At the end of it I said to one of the FA guys, 'why wasn't the video there that showed exactly what he said?'. He said Manchester United had brought a copy, we didn't have a copy. And their copy had the important bit edited out! Again, as I wrote it, it was like a murder trial without the evidence! I said to the FA guy, 'I don't believe this'. He said 'tell them about it in your book'. I had no plans then to write a book, if the FA aren't happy about it now I'll just tell them, 'it was you who told me to write it'."

Ferguson was, in the end, banned from the touchline for two matches and fined, but the experience astonished Winter. As did the fact he wasn't selected to referee a game involving United for two years after he had sent off Roy Keane at Southampton. It left him wondering about the power and influence of England's major clubs, left him concluding if you fall out with "United, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool you probably won't referee their games for a while".

But he was the referee for the FA Cup fifth round meeting of United and Arsenal at Old Trafford three years ago. "I refereed over 2,000 games but it's the 15th of February, 2003, that is implanted on my brain," he laughs, "the first 10 minutes of that game were the hardest 10 minutes I have ever had.

"There was no respect, there were vendettas, tackles flying in, there weren't listening to the whistle, they didn't care about yellow cards, you're thinking 'shit, how am I going to control this?'. Whether it was good luck or good management I spoke to (Roy) Keane and (Patrick) Vieira, let them know in no uncertain terms it had to stop, and it worked, we got out of jail. If they hadn't listened to me, if they'd said 'f*** you', I couldn't have stopped it, Henry Kissinger couldn't have stopped it. It would have been red card, red card, red card and all of a sudden you'd have the game abandoned and then it'd have been all my fault: 'Referee lost control'.

"My wife was in the main stand and she said she just sat there thinking, 'ah Jeff, where is this game going?' Well, I said, that's exactly what I was thinking too. But it really was unmanageable for those 10 minutes. I think it's calmed down a little bit now, Vieira and Keane going may have helped, but it had reached the stage where United v Arsenal games were almost unrefereeable."

While he might have written Keane's name in his notebook more often that most Winter categorises him as one of the players he respected, largely because when he "sinned" he did it right in front of the referee's eyes. "God love Roy Keane, but at least when he did Alf Inge Haaland he did it in the open and held his hands up, what's worse is when the game is going on and suddenly you hear a roar from the crowd, you turn around, someone is lying in a heap and you have not got a bloody clue.

"I liked players like Dennis Wise, Robbie Savage, Craig Bellamy, what you saw was what you got. I loved them, they were characters. The sort of players you would want playing for your team. And I loved Paul Ince. He'd come at you, effing and blinding, I'd tell him where to go and he'd just look at me and smile.

"It was the sneaky ones I didn't like," he says, citing Dennis Bergkamp as an example, "one of the ones who would leave a foot in after the ball was gone".

His "nightmare" quartet? Gary Neville, Lee Bowyer, Danny Mills andTomas Repka. "Surly," he says of them, "Gary and Phil (Neville) seemed to epitomise United's snarling and arrogant attitude in that era".

Savage, though, remains a favourite. "A lovely fella," he says. He even had sympathy for the Welsh midfielder when he got into trouble for using the referee's toilet before a match. "The referee in question was not one of my favourite people," says Winter, "in fact, any one who craps in Graham Poll's toilet can't be all bad."

Who's The B*****d In The Black? (Ebury Press, €27).

"A bog-standard referee who loved himself. He drives me nuts. An absolute prat . . . he has got about as much personality as a bag of chips."

- Steve Bruce, after Winter had criticised Robbie Savage in a newspaper column (2004).

"A big-time homer who is more interested in his rub-on sun tan."

- Everton's David Moyes, paying tribute to Winter in 2003

- "Back to your usual self Jeff, f**king useless."

- Alex Ferguson, after United had won at Fulham in 1999.

"You're a ****ing joke."

- Ferguson again, congratulating Winter's performance as fourth official at Newcastle in 2003.

Winter: "Good news on two fronts, Alex." Ferguson: "What do you mean." Winter: "You've won the FA Cup, and you'll never have me again."

- Winter's last conversation with Ferguson after the 2004 FA Cup final, his last game as a referee.