IT’S Friday afternoon and Doddie Weir is late. Nothing unusual, I’m reassured, just part of the indelible charm of a man the late, great Bill McLaren once described as a mad giraffe on the charge. Eventually, the giraffe landed.

The 47-year-old cuts quite a colourful picture. He just about makes it through the front door of our Glasgow city centre offices without ducking, emerging dressed in a quite magnificent patchwork tartan suit, a get up which has become almost a coat of armour to Weir as the merest hints of the biggest battle of his fulfilling yet short life begin to reveal themselves. The vividness of the reds, greens, whites and blues on this gift-wrapped man mountain are not what illuminates the scene and brings a warmth to the hearts of those there to greet him, though, but the smile across the face of this self-confessed ‘numpty’ upon the welcome of friends old and new.

At first, there is little wrong with the man I’m there to interview. Well, apart from his dress sense, but again I’m told that much like his timekeeping, that’s nothing new either.

Then, it happens.

After shaking hands and embracing those in his company, this gentle giant is forced to call upon the aid of one of his closest friends and confidants to do up the buttons on his technicolour waistcoat for him. For a man who made a career out of running at walls of men without dropping a ball, it is the most subtle but saddest snapshot of a harsh reality that Weir and his beloved ‘good lady’, Kathy, are having to deal with on a day-by-day, instance-by-instance basis after his diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease. Equally, it captured just a flavour of the support being afforded to one of Scotland’s most iconic sportsmen. To them, though, he’s either just Doddie or Dad.

“The emotional side of things has definitely changed. Being a farming, rugby boy, you didn’t really ever show emotion,” said Weir, when we all made our way around the corner to the lounge of a nearby hotel, turning heads as he went. “But certainly within my very close friends who phoned me up - Carl Hogg was one, Kenny [Logan] was another, and a few others as well - and we couldn’t quite finish the conversation. It was ‘right, okay, I’m going to have to phone you back’.”

There are no cracks of a quivering lip on Weir’s face as he sits perched on a long, grey, Swedish couch. Instead, just that grin and glint in the eye which continues to vie for our attentions as the traffic on Renfield Street purrs passed outside behind his sizeable frame. It’s hard to imagine anything striking him down.

The phrase ‘lucky’ is used by the man himself at several points during our meeting which is enough to bring a lump to the throat to someone who had never met the 61-timed capped Scotland lock until 10 minutes previously. Initially, it is difficult to understand why. Weir’s life would change forever around two years ago following an accident in his home in the Borders. After catching his hand in a door back in November 2015 and suffering a loss of power, within a few months his skin started to twitch. Worried, him and the Good Lady sought help.

“Maybe two or three months later I thought things were starting to get better, but my skin started to twitch. Again, I just thought it would be okay, but after some intermittent twitching I went to the doctor about July or August to start the process,” he explains. “There’s no actual test to say you’ve got it. It’s just a bit of brain scans, and they didn’t find one! ‘It’s not where it should be!’ they said. The MRI was in the Borders General Hospital, but that wasn’t too bad because it was a new machine so you could get borders radio. Then I went to the Western to go in the tube again, there’s not a lot of room in there! They didn’t have earphones sadly.

“They then put dye in my body as well as shock testing with an acupuncture needle. I had a lumbar puncture, that was pretty sore. I think with being a big rugby boy it took a bit of doing. In December it got announced to my good lady Kathy and I that this is what we were facing.

“My doctor had an idea and referred me to the hospital and then it was on to the big clinic in Edinburgh. My bloods came up normal, lumbar puncture, normal, brain, couldn’t find one, so then it ultimately came down to MND. We kept it quiet for a while.”

The self-deprecating joke typifies the spirit of a man who was given the news just before Christmas. He remembers that Kathy took the news initially far worse than he did, and, indeed, the first few months coming to terms with the disease were spent, ironically, fretting over others.

“I had an understanding of the issue I had. So when we got told by the professor it was ‘okay, let’s get on with it’ where as my good lady was a lot more upset because she’s never been in that situation before.

“I’ve got it, so let’s crack on and make a difference. My good lady was quite upset that day when we left.

“We kept it to ourselves over Christmas which didn’t help at the same time that my mother, Nanny, had cancer at the same time and wasn’t very well. It was supposed to be our last Christmas together but we ended up being at my sisters for her to be there but she was in hospital. That was happening at the same time, so the rest of the family didn’t really know. We hadn’t told the kids. Mum is still here being narky which means she’s fine.

“The good lady was upset but a couple of days later she got on to things. It’s easier for the family because I’m able to do a lot of things and they probably don’t think there’s too much difference but in the back of the mind down the line things will ultimately change. I was still okay at Christmas, you just don’t know what’s around the corner. There’s a timetable which has never been discussed. But at the meeting they did say in a year I’d not be walking back into the surgery, which was quite hard hitting. So here we are trying to prove them wrong.”

Weir’s inspiring bravery is fuelled by many reasons, some of which we will touch on later, but first and foremost it’s Kathy and their beloved boys Hamish, 16, Angus 15 and Ben, 13. To those who know him, it would come as no surprise that he and Kathy protected the boys as much as they could, with the news of his MND battle only becoming public knowledge when they were safely on a flight to New Zealand to watch the British and Irish Lions during the summer.

“The boys have been absolutely cool about it,” he explains. “The oldest one has a bit of an understanding of it because he’s maybe Googled it. On the odd occasion he gets quite upset at times when we’re out in public with people coming to talk to me, but the other two haven’t said much. We keep going over it again when I’m going to the doctors, we don’t shy away from what I have and where we are.

“We went to New Zealand this year to watch the Lions because ideally we would have like to have gone in four years’ time to South Africa as that’s where I played a number of years ago, but that may not be possible, and I promised them a Lions trip. When it comes to the kids it’s quite tricky.”

We listened on: “My eldest Hamish was on his Highers, so we thought maybe tell them in February. We then put it off to April, but then thought ‘no, let’s leave it until he finishes his Highers’ which worked quite well because MND Awareness Week coincided with when we were flying to New Zealand.

“I didn’t want Hamish to have issues at school, you just never know. So going to New Zealand when we did was good as we announced it as we were just flying away. I took my sim card out my phone because I couldn’t work out how to divert my calls and being tight like I am I thought I’d get charged an absolute fortune!

“People in New Zealand were wonderful. The support we have had is amazing, and still is. For a numpty from the Borders to get so much support is quite overwhelming.”

With the love and support of his Kathy, the boys and his friends and family, Weir’s outlook is as bright as his neatly-buttoned waistcoat. A staggering and inspiring position given the limited options which he describes as ‘frustrating’. In Scotland the only treatment for MND is long-standing drug Riluzole, which is known to slow down the progression of a disease which stops the brain signals reaching muscles in the body.

It is a one-way street, no matter what speed you are travelling down it, that Weir is hoping to change into an avenue of hope. Perhaps for himself, but most certainly for others. Again, the word lucky is mentioned. Through his foundation, Doddie Weir’5 Trust, he is out to raise awareness and money to not explore alternative treatments, but help fund research in the hunt for a cure.

“The behind-the-scenes nursing in Scotland is fantastic. When you aren’t well, there’s a lot of help,” he said. “We’ve done speech therapy and voice banking. That means whenever my voice disappears you go through an iPad to press a button and it comes out in my voice. It’s worked well.

“But the actual research is the issue. There’s one pill called Riluzole and that came out in 1995. That’s all they give you. You get blood tested every week or every month, and if your system doesn’t take it then they tell you to sit in a corner and they’ll wait until you’re not very well and bring the nurses in. The front end is quite frustrating. They can’t say ‘try this’ or ‘do that’ because there’s nothing there. And that’s annoyed me a little bit. We’re in the 21st Century, at least you can try something. To look at the website was the first thing they said.”

The time with Weir, perhaps the most humbling man I’ve ever had the honour of sharing air with, is sadly coming to an end.

“I’ve not had a big melt, even at home, because I’m not sure it would help,” he explains, without a hint of bravado. “Maybe the odd time in the car. But again I go back to my life. I’ve had a fantastic life. If it wasn’t me this was happening to, it would be someone else.

“So crack on, get on with it … yes, I have thoughts about the future, which is a bit tricky, because you always look to work your life to look for future and now it’s cut short by 10 or 15 years and you’ve got to look at that, the kids and the wife’s future, that’s in the back of your mind…

“I’ve always had a positive outlook. Do what you can do today and worry about tomorrow when it comes. And if it doesn’t come then you’ve a bloody good time.”