A regional journalist has penned a new book about a sporting enigma and the most famous headbutt in football’s history – without a face-to-face interview.

An obsession about former Dundee United, Rangers, Newcastle and Everton legend Duncan Ferguson has ended with Scotsman football correspondent Alan Pattullo writing a tome some 20 years after the ‘footballing crime of the century’.

Alan’s literary work, published this week, is aptly titled In Search of Duncan Ferguson as he admits it proved impossible to track down the lanky centre-forward for an interview.

It seeks to explain the actions of a “misunderstood footballer who deserved another hearing” after becoming the first British player to be jailed for assaulting a fellow pro.

Going down . . . the headbutt that led to a 44-day prison stay for footballer Duncan Ferguson, left

On the trail of Ferguson, Alan recalls: “There were times when I wondered what on earth I was doing. Why was I in Finland, in an opera house interviewing a composer about Ferguson?

“Why was I turning up unannounced on the doorstep of a retired sheriff? Why was I creaking open a door in a hotel bar in Anstruther, where Ferguson was involved in one rammy too many, to be met by a gallery of stares?”

He added: “These were all places on the Ferguson map as I tried to join the dots, without his co-operation.”

The stats stack up against Ferguson – he spent 44 days in Barlinnie prison in 1995 for butting Raith Rovers defender Jock McStay during a Scottish Premier match with Rangers in April 1994. He was given a further 12-game ban on his release

He was described as the prison’s most famous customer since German war leader Rudolph Hess – and received fan mail from a 12-year-old Wayne Rooney.

“Ferguson lost his liberty for an act of folly on a football pitch that was over in just a few seconds,” said Alan.

“Of course it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that, something that I set out to explain in my book,” he went on.

His new missive – which had an original working title of The Headbutt -follows two previous books on the subject. Big Dunc: The story of a Goodison Hero was produced by Everton without input from Ferguson, now coach at Goodison Park, and a novel published a few years ago called simply The Slap.

The closest Alan got to the man – a dog-eared copy of Nick Hornby’s book Fever Pitch, signed by Ferguson while he languished inside the Glasgow prison for six weeks as autumn turned to winter in 1995.

“It was given to me by one of the prison officers who struck up a cordial relationship with the famous inmate, who they’d been warned had arrived as a footballer worth £4million – ‘and he better leave as one too’,” said Alan.

“Barlinnie wasn’t and still isn’t a place for the faint-hearted. Some things have changed since Ferguson was there. But as one governor informed me, ‘these are still the same walls’,” he added.

Scotsman colleague Aidan Smith remembers all the times Alan tried to “get him to talk for the book – the letters, the doorstepping, the notes passed to the few people Ferguson trusted.”

The difficulty in getting Ferguson to open up was exemplified when he helped Everton win the 1995 FA Cup. Asked to say a few words about his part in the victory, he told the Scottish press: “I’ll spare you two, f*** yeez.”