The ex-Celtic captain is twice the man Barton is. There is no “feud” worth talking about.

There’s a body of evidence that if you were a success at Ibrox, the Scottish media will love you no matter who you are or what you do with the rest of your life. And I mean your personal life. If you’ve been a hero with that club and have fans in the Scottish media as a result, you can pretty much get away with anything.

Exhibit A will always be Paul Gascoigne. He remains a hero to many in our media who have fond memories of watching him in the Ibrox blue jersey. Those memories are not clouded in any way by his long, notorious aftermath — a history as a violent drunk, a racist, a sectarian bigot, and an abuser of women. When the SFA proposed putting him in the Hampden Hall of Fame, there was an outcry from women’s groups and from fans across Scotland. His loudest supporters were in the media.

But the truth is, you don’t even have to have succeeded at Ibrox to remain a media darling. You just have to be sufficiently disrespectful toward Celtic, and anything goes. Hating this club still covers a multitude of sins and still gets you headlines, even if you are the proverbial piece of shit. It really is something to see.

And the guy whose name came up this morning is about as low and down in the dirt as anybody you could ever find. I refer, of course, to Joey Barton, who is making headlines today because he’s had a pop at Scott Brown. Anything to get yourself in the news. Anything except being up in court for violence against women — involving beating your own girlfriend. Because that was the last time he made headlines.

He’s “reigniting the feud with Brown,” according to the Record. That would be the feud he ran away from. That would be the feud he’s conducted largely on his own from the safe distance of social media.

Because when they were actually face to face on the pitch, in battle, words were muttered, and he was bullied, harassed, and humiliated. The famous picture of him prior to that game, as Brown stares straight at him as he lowers his head, remains one of the indelible images of recent Scottish football history.

I’m sure Brown couldn’t care less what Joey Barton says on Twitter. All I know is that this so-called feud has been largely in the mind of one man. But it’s been amplified by the media, which seems to find it amusing — which seems to find Barton amusing. He’s labelled a “controversial character.” He’s a thug. And a woman beater. That’s what he is. Nothing controversial about that. He’s a scumbag.

He once had pretensions as some sort of intellectual. I have always suspected that this was because he used Wikipedia and Google on a regular basis. He certainly was never anywhere near as smart as so many people tried to suggest. I don’t wish to wonder why many of them were so invested in the idea that Barton was some sort of poet-philosopher, but I think they got lost up their own backsides trying to paint him as such — because for them there was something sexy about the idea that a professional footballer could also understand the writings of Carl Jung.

But I suspect he’s not alone in that. You know, this presupposes that he does understand them in the first place. There are a lot of footballers out there who are so far removed from the image of the average player as some kind of ignorant clod who wouldn’t be cut out for any other business or way of life, that it amazes you when you find out some of them have alternative career paths when they’re done.

Barton has always come across as a phoney. And the more you learn about him, the more you recognise that’s exactly what he is.

But even if he were some sort of soaring intellect amongst his footballing peers, his behaviour over the years reveals him to be nothing but a boot boy. A well-read one, perhaps. But at the end of the day, just another dirtbag.

The media fascination with him is odd at best. And when reflected through the lens in Glasgow, it’s the product of too much pro-Ibrox fanboy gushing. But he hates Celtic. Ha ha ha. He hates Scott Brown. And that’s a news story.

He’s a coward. Most men who beat women tend to be cowards. And we’re not just supposing that — we saw it with our own eyes when he came up against Brown in a meaningful game. Which is the closest to actual combat those two are ever going to come — or you’d hope so, anyway.

But I’ll tell you this for free. No matter how much The Daily Record seems to love this guy, if it ever does come to that… I know who my money’s on to win.