IF MARTIN PETERS WAS TEN YEARS ahead of his time, Rodney Marsh was 200 years late. “I should have been born in the late 1700s,” he said. “That was the time of highwaymen and rascals and romance.”

It is a neat summary, but it barely hints at his kaleidoscopic guises as a Blitz baby, a boy beaten with a belt called “Kennedy” and an England player sealing his fate with a gag about masturbation.

An hour into the interview and Marsh has spoken about Salvador Dali and Chinese ink paintings, Elton John and the Rolling Stones, “f***ing idiots” and “total a***holes”. History books tell you that he played for Fulham, dropped to the third division to inspire Queens Park Rangers’ League Cup win in 1967, captained Manchester City and got a tan in Tampa. They omit the bits about the family history in which a relative smashed an ashtray into his mother’s face and the two days drifting in and out of consciousness after being bashed in the head during a game against Leicester City.

This is Marshland, a maverick world where the stories are Day-glo but the opinions black and white. Maybe it is this gift of the gab, learnt as a survival mechanism, that makes him more able than most to explain the psyche of “The Entertainers”.

Exhibit A: “I’m playing for Manchester City against Birmingham. We’re 3-0 up and playing brilliantly. I get the ball in the outside left position. It’s almost like looking through my own mind’s eye and all the other 21 players are there to watch me. I’m going towards a defender. I keep dropping my shoulder. I’m oblivious to the whole game around me. The defender falls on his backside. I’m ten yards from goal. I just need to shoot or pass square to Colin Bell who will score. I try to chip the goalkeeper. It bounces on the crossbar and over. The crowd give me a standing ovation. The manager says, “what the f***ing hell were you thinking?”

Exhibit B: “I’m playing for Tampa Bay Rowdies against the Memphis Rogues. It’s 1-1 and we get a last-minute corner. The ball comes in and I hit a bicycle kick into the top corner. Jimmy Husband runs after me. He’s going to hit me, so I turn round and butt him first. There’s a 22-man mêlée. Fans are on the pitch. The referee sends me off and I throw my shirt in his face. I ’m like a matador in the bullring. Brilliant.”

Marsh says that “The Entertainers” were a club with George Best as their leader and Terry O’Neill their photographer. “Did we know we were different? Christ, yeah. It was a brilliant era. There was rebellion everywhere and nothing was off limits — drinking, gambling, nightclubs until 5am. You got ten parking tickets and you threw them away. We were part of the anti-establishment. They say you get nothing from evolution, it has to be revolution.”

It was no surprise that Marsh, hirsute and sharp-suited, would clash with officialdom. “I fell out with the manager” is the interview’s refrain. “There is an institutional fear of genuine talent in England,” Marsh said. “If Ronaldinho had been English it would have been drummed out of him. It’s astonishing the level of distrust. I would be told, ‘play the way you ’re facing’, but I’d say: ‘I’ve got vision.’ ”

The most famed falling out was with Sir Alf Ramsey. “Me and Alf were oil and water,” Marsh said. “He had a regimented attitude and wanted to get me to play like Geoff Hurst. I wanted to pack in after three caps. It was only Malcolm Allison who kept me going. I got nine but never did myself justice.”

It was 1973 in the dressing-rooms at Wembley when Marsh made the quip that ended his England career. Ramsey gave warning that if Marsh did not work hard enough, he would be pulled off at half-time. “Christ!” he replied, ambivalent about the consequences. “All we get at Manchester City is a cup of tea and an orange.” It was his last cap.

The brashness and honesty have long conspired against him. In his football afterlife as a pundit, he caused a furore by making a joke about the tsunami. He counters by saying society is too restrictive. “Now you have rules a, b and c, subsections eight, nine and ten.” It was ever thus. When Peter Swales, the chairman at Maine Road, called him in to ask for his opinion of Tony Book and Ian MacFarlane, the manager and head coach, he gave it straight. “I said the truth is they are f***ing useless. They sacked me and put me on the transfer list for that. Elton John’s manager rang and said did I want to take his private plane to LA. So I did. Elton was out of it but sensational company.”

The United States may appear a suitably artificial epitaph, but there was always substance behind the Marsh style. Beaten by his father and “Kennedy”, he went deaf in one ear after his accident against Leicester and spent a depressing ten months as a teen wondering if his career was over. He is a voracious reader and history buff, once stopping the team bus to check a fact in a library. He owns three Dali etchings and “did some shadow-painting of birds recently”. He hates political correctness but loves football, wishing he had played under Arsène Wenger. He has also come to appreciate lesser talents, even those such as the team-mate who labelled him a performing seal. “It’s the things that are ordinary that make the greatness what it is,” he concluded.

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