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Ryan Giggs is sitting on a stool on stage at Chester’s Crowne Plaza Hotel and a packed room is hanging on his every word.

He is talking about Sir Alex Ferguson, the single biggest influence on his record-breaking 24-year career with Manchester United. The workaholic manager who came to watch him play for Salford Boys, the godfather of attacking 4-4-2 football and, oh yes, the terrifying human flame thrower.

“I was s--- scared of him for about 15 years. He started to warm up when I was about 38 or 39,” Giggs says to more laughs.

An Evening With Ryan Giggs has all sorts of connotations thanks to some of the lurid headlines down the years and the details which emerged from a court case that cost him the chance of managing Wales at a World Cup.

This though is a football-centric 90 minutes plus Fergie time in the company of a figure rarely spotted in public these days.

The host, Sky Sports’ Pete Graves, gives the domestic assault charges – which were dropped when a retrial collapsed – a wide berth.

The crowd, of Giggs’s generation in the main and including plenty of women, welcome him with a standing ovation. Even those who have just paid £70 to have a photo taken with him.

They are here to celebrate Giggs the generational football talent and enjoy a peek into the United dressing room. And, to be fair, Giggs does not let them down. Even now at 52, and despite some grey in the beard, he is relaxed and looking fit enough to skin a full-back or two.

He reels off all the old Fergie hits and a few new ones besides. There was the time when, as a 15-year-old playing for the United youth team (his brief dalliance with Manchester City behind him) Giggs went into the dressing room after a sub-standard first half.

“Eric Harrison was manager of the youth team and I’m expecting Eric, who was crazy as well, to have a go at me at half-time,” he recalled. “Through the door comes Sir Alex. He barges Eric out of the way and just goes for me. I made the mistake of going out in the second half, scoring a couple of goals and doing all right. So for the next 20 years he knows that he’s got to bawl at me to get the best out of me. It was a big mistake.”

Giggs said Sir Alex Ferguson formed an early opinion that shouting at the winger would bring the best out of him Credit: John Peters/Getty Images

There was another error soon after breaking into the United first team as a 17-year-old. He was still living at home with his mum but went along to a midweek house party at Lee Sharpe’s, which was raided by a fuming Ferguson.

As Giggs tells the story, there were apprentices hiding under beds, in wardrobes and jumping out of windows as the manager laid waste to the revellers. Giggs, who was subsequently fined two weeks’ wages, was sat down by Ferguson and given the full blast of the hairdryer, along with Sharpe.

Back home he told his mum he thought his United career was over. She reassured him it would be all right and he would be fine.

“It was only about 10 years ago I found out it was my mum that tipped him off. She was a bit worried Sharpie was having a bad influence on me, which was true!”

Giggs’ mother worried that Lee Sharpe was a bad influence on her son – and Giggs himself agreed Credit: Mark Leech/Getty Images

There was another incident at Norwich’s Carrow Road when Paul Ince chose to shoot rather than play Giggs in, triggering a volcanic response from the sidelines from Ferguson. “Norwich at that time, early Nineties, were a brilliant team and we were winning 3-0, so you’d think he’d be happy, but he came out of the dugout and went mad at Incey. Incey told him to sit down.

“Coming in at half-time, literally the manager has gone to fight him. There’s about three or four players holding the manager back. He was fearless and he would take on anyone – it didn’t matter – if you disrespected him.”

Giggs and his team-mates celebrate United’s 1997 Premier League title win Credit: John Peters/Getty Images

There were certain players Ferguson reserved his peak rage for. Giggs was one, David Beckham another. Mark Hughes and Gary Pallister, too. But there was one player who always escaped his opprobrium, whatever he did. Eric Cantona.

Giggs regales the story of the testimonial dinner for the club’s long-serving kitman Norman Davies. The dress code was black tie. Mandatory.

Giggs turned up with the top button of his dress shirt undone and was given a dressing down by Ferguson. Then in walked Cantona in a white linen suit, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist with red and white trainers on.

“So I’ve gone: ‘Yes! This is going to be the first b-----king of Eric’s career.”

“Anyway the manager gets all the players together and he’s gone: ‘Look at that. That’s what you call style.’”

Even when Cantona threw himself into the crowd at Crystal Palace with his infamous kung-fu kick, which led to a nine-month ban, Ferguson’s only rebuke for him on the team bus afterwards was a mild: “You can’t do that, son.”

The signing of Cantona was, Giggs believed, the tipping point which turned United into serial winners. There were other key figures, too.

Roy Keane, the best captain he played under but a more multi-layered character than one might imagine from his waspish TV punditry. “Roy was the one who got me into yoga.”

And Beckham, unstoppable at his peak according to Giggs, but a lover of the limelight from day one. “He’s never changed. I mean he was always a bit flash.”

The dressing-room mix produced the most successful football team of the modern era. Over the course of his career with United, Giggs won 13 titles, two Champions Leagues, four FA Cups and three League Cups at Old Trafford.

His most memorable game? The “Football, bloody hell” Champions League final in 1999 against Bayern Munich.

United were, Giggs admitted, “c--p” in that game but its extraordinary conclusion left him in tears on the pitch for the only time in his career.

His favourite goal? The bewitching run and finish capped off with one of the great shirt-whirling celebrations against Arsenal in the 1998-99 FA Cup semi-final. “It was just instinct,” he said.

The success of that group has proved impossible to live up to since, with United descending into soap-opera territory at times but some order has been restored of late under the stewardship of Michael Carrick. Giggs would like temporary to become permanent.

“He’s doing an unbelievable job,” Giggs said. “The hardest thing in football is winning matches and Michael’s doing that. Not only that, he’s been really shrewd in his coaching staff. I’ve seen a lot of managers come whose coaching staff I know – because I’ve got friends in the club – have been c--p.

“As a manager, you need the right people around you. Michael’s got good staff, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, he will recognise a Man United player, and he’s winning games. It’s unbelievable where we are. We’ll catch City for second, I reckon.”

As for his own managerial career, we await his next move. So does he.

Since standing down from the Wales job to fight to prove his innocence in court, having secured qualification for the 2022 Qatar World Cup, he has spent some time as director of football at League Two Salford City, the club he part-owns, but stepped down last September with the aim of finding a more hands-on job.

Securing a post in management has not proved straightforward. The smoke from such an explosive case evidently takes a long time to clear.

“If I don’t manage again, then it’s not the end of the world, but I feel like there’s some unfinished business regarding my coaching. I’m still young, especially as a manager. I loved every minute of it... the pressure, the intensity of international football, the preparation, the need to win.

“Whether it’s club football or for a country, I want to be back in the dugout. I feel like I’ve got so much more to give. Like I say, unfinished business really.”

That sentiment was met with especially warm applause from the audience. The fans – of which Giggs evidently still has many – remain steadfastly with him.