Nigel Clough leant against the door frame of the chairman’s room at Nottingham Forest. He fiddled with his car keys, impatiently tossing them in the air and catching them. His father, Brian, was lolling across a leather sofa. He’d rolled his tracksuit bottoms as high as his knees. He looked like a holiday-maker about to paddle in the sea.

For more than an hour, Nigel had been waiting to drive him home. At least half a dozen times, his father had told him: “Give me five minutes.” Now Nigel was visibly impatient. He had an appointment to keep. “Ring your mother and tell her we’ll be a wee bit late,” said Brian. “I might have a bath and get changed.”

Nigel grimaced, let out a deep sigh and gripped the keys tightly in his fist. As he stomped away, Brian yelled after him: “Don’t lose your rag, busy bollocks. I’m coming.” He climbed off the sofa, rubbing the stiffness out of his knee joints. “I think I’ve upset the chauffeur,” he said, promptly vanishing with a quick “ta-ra”.

I got to know Brian Clough well, through good times and bad, during the 20 years I covered Forest for the Nottingham Evening Post. For me, this short, inconsequential scene illustrated the fundamental contrast in character between father and son. Last week Nigel left Burton Albion to become the 15th manager to follow Brian into Derby County. As he begins the job his father abandoned in a fit of pique in 1973, a season after winning the league title - and prepares for a televised FA Cup tie against Forest on January 23 - those personality differences will become more obvious than ever. The name is the same; the style and temperament are not. Nigel brings his father’s Baseball Ground principles to Pride Park: discipline, clean sheets and neat passing. He doesn’t bring his father’s chameleon tendencies.

Brian veered from pyrotechnical flashiness to blissful charm. He was frequently rude and could be exasperating for the sake of it. And he never wore a wrist watch. He lived in his own idiosyncratic time zone, which the rest of us worked around. To be late was his prerogative. Nigel was humbly apologetic if he delayed you for five minutes. As well as being punctual, he was also modest, polite, tolerant and well mannered.

Those traits will shape the quiet way in which he tries to lift Derby out of relegation trouble and dispose of his and his father’s former club in the Cup. This early test is critical. The Derby-Forest rivalry isn’t just about geography or a century-long feud over bragging rights. A jealous squabble persists over which end of the A52 - the Brian Clough Way - Brian’s heart truly lies. When Nottingham unveiled with fuss and flummery their £60,000 statue of Brian eight weeks ago, a glorious piece of one-upmanship, there were anxious squeals in Derby for an identical honour, as if Nottingham were trying to steal Brian from them.

Given Nigel’s availability and the cult of Clough, it seems odd that Forest didn’t approach him after abruptly sacking Colin Calderwood last month. The former Derby boss Billy Davies stepped in instead. Derby’s hiring of Nigel has given the black and whites of the East Midlands the justification to boast that Brian Clough - and now his son - truly belongs to them. Forest have missed a trick, a fact that the Cup might yet endorse.

I suspect Brian would be chuffed at how things have worked out. He’d also be nervous on Nigel’s behalf. Irrespective of how much he achieved at Forest, the hurt and bitter regret of resigning from Derby never left him. He had an emotional attachment to Derby that Forest, despite 18 years and two European Cups, could never quite match.

He would have viewed Nigel’s appointment both as a continuation of that intimate bond and partly as family atonement for his mistake in leaving. Shortly before his death in 2004, Brian admitted some of his heart was always with Derby: “I wish I’d never left.” With Nigel back, he’ll seem to be there still.

As a player, Nigel was that rare thing: a cerebral footballer. He read Graham Greene novels, soaked up Shakespeare’s plays. “He’s really more like his mother, Barbara,” Brian frequently pointed out. “She likes the theatre and the ballet, things that bore the arse off me.” He would say it with stoic acceptance, rather than regret, before adding: “But then our business together is football.”

At Derby, Nigel practised shooting with title winners such as Dave Mackay, Alan Hinton and John O’Hare. At Brighton, he sat in the dugout.

At Forest, he made his League debut on Boxing Day, 1984, aged 18. I’ve always believed Brian, more than anybody else, struggled to handle his son’s emergence as a goalscorer. He had more difficulty than Nigel’s coaches, the other players and Nigel himself. Brian fretted over claims of nepotism. He worried that Nigel would be deliberately hacked down and injured (which is why he played under a pseudonym for Forest’s youth team). He was concerned the crowds might bait him purely because he was his son. “The sins of fathers,” he said, “shouldn’t be heaped on the shoulders of the sons . . . but he’ll get a fair amount of that in any case, no matter what I say.” Privately, he was “our Nige” and Brian talked of him at length not only as a boss but also as an exceptionally proud father. “He’s brave . . . and he thinks, which is an asset ’cos brainy footballers are better than thick ones.”

Publicly, Brian wouldn’t call Nigel by his Christian name. He was either “the number nine” or “the centre-forward”. Small things bothered him. Headline writers frequently aired the phrase: The Son Also Rises. Brian thought it was being used to the point of meaninglessness. He once asked in a bad temper: “It’s the same old crap. Isn’t there any imagination in newspaper offices?”

If Brian were alive today, he’d reveal parental protectiveness for Nigel all over again, but only because of the high expectations others are already placing on him. He’d be confident his boy could handle it. I once made the mistake of casually asking Brian: “When did you realise that Nigel had talent?” He dropped his chin to his chest and gave me a hard stare, as if peering over a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He wagged his finger in rebuke. “As soon as he was born, of course,” he said sharply. “He’s my son - he was bound to have talent.”

Duncan Hamilton is the author of Provided You Don’t Kiss Me - 20 Years With Brian Clough, the William Hill Sports Book of 2007

Nigel Clough’s progress

Born March 19 1966 (Sunderland)

Playing career

CLUB GAMES GOALS
1984-93 Nottingham Forest 317 102
1993-96 Liverpool 39 7
1996-98 Manchester City 39 4
1996-97 Nottingham Forest (loan) 13 1
1997 Sheffield Wednesday 1 0
1998-08 Burton Albion 300 16

International career Clough played 14 times for his country at senior level but never managed to score a goal

Honours

Twice a League Cup winner as a player with Nottingham Forest (1989, 1990). In the 1989 final, he scored twice as Forest beat holders Luton Town 3-1. He also collected an FA Cup runners-up medal with the club in 1991 and a League Cup runners-up medal in 1992. As a manager he steered Burton Albion to the Northern Premier League Premier Division title in 2001-02