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“Everybody shows me the video of ‘Careless Whisper’, and then me being scared of nothing. I get asked by people all the time, ‘What were you scared of?’ And I say that I can only imagine that the players — taking the piss — have the warm-up balls, then as the referee blows for them to be kicked off, they launch them into the dug-out. So you’d be sat in the dug-out and get one right plum in the kipper. And then they’re all laughing. So I can only think that someone has launched one and someone else has said, ‘Gaffer! Watch out!’”

Watch: Mick gets scared by nothing

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It’s funny,” McCarthy says, “While I was in the garage clearing it out, I found a letter from the officials at Sunderland, saying they wanted me to go to a meeting during that (2005-06 Premier League) season to analyse the physios, training, why we were having so many injuries, what the players were doing, and just generally why we were having such a shite season — although they didn’t say that last bit. And then at the end it said, ‘One more thing, we’d like you to tell us what we can do to help you more.’ I was thinking, ‘It’s a bit fricking late now!’

On signing Tyrone Mings:

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Picking up players for next to nothing, developing them, and seeing them go onto bigger things, is something else that McCarthy finds gratifying about management. Tyrone Mings is the obvious starting point for that discussion, bearing in mind the England international was working as a mortgage adviser when Ipswich paid Chippenham Town £10,000 for him in 2013.

McCarthy can still picture himself and Russell Osman, the Ipswich great, walking over to the pitch where a trial game had just kicked off. Osman had recommended Mings to McCarthy after a tip-off from his son, Toby, one of Mings’ team-mates. “Ty won a header, he dropped a ball down the side — he was really involved in the first five minutes while Russell and I were still chatting. I said, ‘I’ll sign him on what I’ve seen now,” McCarthy recalls. “He was 6ft 4in, he was built like an Adonis, he was an unbelievable specimen of a man… well, of a kid, as he was then (19 years old). He was chirping on the pitch, telling people what to do. He was everything I’d have wanted in a player. He could play, he was quick. There was no downside at all.

“I remember he was getting stuck in, then he went to kick a ball and somebody left a foot in, an older player, and he kicked right through it. I said: ‘Somebody’s going to do him.’ He was limping a bit. I said, ‘Take him off.’ And of course he was having a row with me then, saying, ‘I don’t want to come off.’ I said, ‘I’m taking you off because I want to sign you. Shut the frick up and just sit down will you, and put some ice on your shin.’ He changed his tune then.

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Some of the questions I get asked — they deserve those one-liners, a brutal put down, or to be laughed at. I remember losing a game 5-1, we’ve scored an own goal, had a player sent off — it’s all gone tits up, the whole game. They’ve waited half an hour before they interview me, and then someone asked, ‘So, Mick, what are the positives you can take out of that game?’” McCarthy turned on his heel and walked away

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I once ran McCarthy’s post-match expletives word-for-word in a match report, unlike others, who changed “I don’t give a flying frick” to “flying fig”. The following week I turned up late to a press conference at Wolves and, when I apologised as I walked through the door, totally unaware that McCarthy had been mocking the reporters who had chosen to change his words, he told me to “frick off”. After a short pause, he collapsed in hysterics.