Thanks for the mammarys, Nando.

How ironic that making a tit of himself on a flight ended the Ibrox career of a man famous for watching two tits in flight - about ten feet off his front grass in Newton Mearns.

I can never quite remember - was Jordan the one on the trampoline, buck nekid at 2 in the morning, or was that just a random lap dancer who was doing the bouncey on Nando’s front lawn? Either way, he defo made the beast with two backs with the “glamour” model who has a frontal endowment requiring the support of two backs.

Fernando Ricksen. Jordan/Katy Price. He was there before Peter Andre and I bet oor Nando sings better too. What a man. Being able to perform with, for me, the pyoor evilest wumin in showbiz today, must have taken some, erm, doing. I don’t care what anyone says - Jordan is totally 100% mingin (to borrow from her own parlance), even more so with her cartoon cleavage. But that’s Fernando Ricksen for you - if there was something dirty and controversial to be done, he’d do it.

Sorry - that sounded horrendously sexist. Jordan’s ills are as nothing compared to those of millions more blokes and - hey - I ain’t saying women are less entitled to a libido as rampant as yer avergae “red-blooded” chauvinist. I’m just saying that slipping Jordan one is an act of unparalleled recreational bravery, or folly.

And, unfortunately, we all think Nando tended a bt more towards the latter.

Some Bears loved him. Some Bears hated him. Most Bears actually have the intellectual capacity to let their opinions change in accordance with an individual’s ability and behaviour on a game-by-game basis while still judging sed player within the parameters of the wider context his greater acts of brilliance or negligence have established as the more pervasive general sense of merit or otherwise deserved in a fuller reckoning of the subject’s worth to all aspects of supporting Rangers Football Club. Me? Ah liked him.

It doesn’t make sense, I suppose, but my gut reaction to his name is always good. Cannae help smiling every time I think of Nando Rickers.

Okay, maybe part of that smile is relief that he’s now been sold on and we won’t have to deal with anymore of the negative ramifications of his Ticking-Time Bomb personality. His dismissals - particularly the one in the first half at the Piggery and against PSG at Ibrox - more often than not sold the jerseys and had me jumping up and down, shrieking, without the aid of any trampolines. Combine that with his thoroughly miserable Old Firm debut, contributing to a 6-2 defeat at Paranoia Palace, and there seems little reason for anything other than cheer at his departure. We got a million quid for him from Zenit St Petersburg this week - we could use that a lot more than we can use another front-page banner headline featuring some “Ricksen Shame”.

Yet, look closer and Nando had more to recommend him. Captaining the club to probably their most extraordinary Championship win of the last fifty one is chief amongst those good points. The captain of a Rangers title-winning team cannot be all bad. For me, they tend to be heroes of the highest order. 22nd May 2005’s most famous quote was “The helicopter is changing direction” - but the second best sound bite was from the man born in Heerlen, turning round something he himself had noted that morning: “First is everything, second is nothing.”

The debacle at Parkhead in August 2000 was Advocaat’s fault if anyone’s. The fact Dick picked him for The Netherlands and then took him to St Petersburg in the first place, shows he’s not changed his initial judgement of the guy he signed for Rangers from AZ Alkmaar in the summer of 2000. Possibly, the harder truth is that celtic were just too good on that awful day. Who could have predicted Bobby bloody Petta would ever have ANY good games for Celtic, never mind SUCH a good game - but the Little General shouldn’t have fielded a player who clearly wasn’t up to it and, even if Dick then corrected his mistake by subbing him after 23 minutes, for Ricksen to recover from that to win two titles with Rangers was quite a feat in itself. Nae wonder he liked a drink!

A drunk driving charge and having the polis at the door because the uptight Newton Mearns neighbours had a problem with fireworks at 3 in the morning. Never a dull moment off the pitch for the Rickster. His off-field problems sometimes got past the stewards and polis and ened up on the pitch too - as at Pittodrie where he was attacked by a GENUINE nutter. With the Aberdeen fans, Ian Durrant’s near career-ending injury at the studs of Neil Simpson is still a matter for great celebration - but Nando having a fly kick at one of their Young twins was a hanging offence.

I was at the game in November 2000 when Nando had his “kung fu kick” at Darren Young. Believe it or not I was actually in the press area for the evening - I went to the post-match press conference with Ebbe Skovdahl, Advocaat, etc. Can’t REALLY remember anyone making a big deal about it. That would be the next morning once the tabloids had got their interesting angle on an uneventful match. I was sat next to Roddy Forsyth during the game while he and Brian Irvine did the Five Live commentary and Mr F had to crane his neck backwards to watch the replays of the Sky TV pictures being shown in the executive boxes behind him in order to see what Young was complaining about (Yeah - I know - what shitty seats for the “press” - but that’s what ye get when yer covering games for The Watchtower).

Nando is then the first SPL player ever to be “convicted” by video evidence (yet another fact neatly missed by celtic’s, rent-a-victim horde of conspiracy theorists) and suspended. Okay, here we could say was another moment when he cost The Rangers and committed, for me, the most heinous crime of all - selling those jerseys. He was caught and got what he deserved, yeah - no moans on that count. But I’d always railed against Nando’s proclivity for getting himself sent off for petulance rather than being a true hard man or psycho and actually doing some damage. At least in the Pittodrie instance he actually put the boot into a deserving player from a deserving team in front of their deserving support. And we won 2-1 too! I was fully behind Nando on that one.

Unlike the time he was caught complaining when Alan Thompson of Smellik smacked him over the napper. Don’t complain, Nando - HIT HIM BACK! HARDER! This was my main complaint - that and the fact he was initially shite at right back. When he moved into midfield though and when he gave up the bevvy under Alex McLeish, he was brilliant - a one-man engine. No-one really noticed him being utterly compelling during the even more utterly compelling general amazingness of the 2002 Scottish Cup Final. But it was a prelude to centrocampista bliss. During the treble season of 2002/2003 he was the minder and grafter who gave Bazza room to shine.

Stories would come out of Ibrox of how he preferred to play at right back but, for me, he was clearly a midfield grafter with no little skill. When we struggled at the beginning of 2004/2005 - sans Barry - Nando became the perfect captain, hardly collecting as much as a reprimand from refs and hitting a brilliant free-kick into the Pittodrie net to so sweetly send his personal Grampian fan club out the League Cup and begin a steady rise to a great season . He scored in all competitions - be it in Poland against Amica Wronki in the UEFA Cup Group stages or Motherwell at Hampden in the CIS Cup final. He scored our only Scottish Cup goal of that season - against the Soap Dodgers at The Piggery - and he netted the ballsiest penalty winner any Rangers player has had to take for many a year, in injury time at Tynecastle after a certain Andy Davis had put the home fans in uproar with a soft-sih (Heh-heh!) award. All a long way from his first positive moment in Blue - a sweet tight-angled volley in December 2000, into the Copland Road goal, against St Johnstone - but ample proof that he’d certainly been worth hanging on to.

Barry came back in early 2005 and the following season, probably realising the heat was off him, Nando slacked a bit again, was injured for a long time - he’s a man who needed responsibility to keep his “demons” in check. But he managed still to be part of the first Scottish team ever to make the knock-out stages of the Champions League and - oh how we needed someone with his spirit, if not his ingestion of spirits, in the earlys stages of this season. The po-faced, humourless, “Demo at the front doors” types will, of course, lament his irresponsibility during that pre-season flight to South Africa and they’re quite right - but he got his marching orders so he’s been aptly punished. But these people should also be lambasting Chris Burke for his recent ‘tude towards staying at the club who made him a star way beyond any demonstrable talents he posesses. So I’m glad that Nando’s last kick at Ibrox, in the White of Zenit St Petersburg, was on cheeky little shite Burke’s ankle.

Perspective always helps when judging a player’s time at The Brox. Measuring what Nando achieved, for so much abuse received, against what Burke has done for such floods of praise - I’ll side with the guy who got sent off to the Eastern Front without a complaint rather than the kid who blows with the wind depending on his daddy’s whim and the team’s fortunes while he lies injured, having barely earned a medal of his own.

Lasting memories though? First thing that’ll come to mind when this Dutchman’s name comes up from now til the day I die? The sight of Fernando being held onto the lip of the podium by his team-mates, as he lustily raised the SPL trophy to the Bears in Easter Road on 22nd May 2005 was as sumptuously chaotic and fragile an image as you could hope for in summing up such a see-saw day - and such an unstable man. He just hung on long enough - on that podium’s edge , at Rangers, and to his sanity - to taste the ultimate triumph…and present it to The Rangers support.

Good luck Nando.

(Oh, there was something in the air that night - bare boobs in flight … Fernando! It was a lovely little garden scene, on a trampoline - Fernando…)