'The monarchy makes me proud to be English'

Ian Botham will receive his knighthood tomorrow after a career of remarkable triumph and trouble. The Guardian's Donald McRae speaks to the man who would be knight:

Botham's candour, however, can be moving rather than just amusing. He contemplated, with rare seriousness, the prickly selfishness and contrasting selflessness which underpin not so much his knighthood as his life.

And Botham is as blunt-talking as he has always been, and he cannot resist a swipe at the establishment at the way he was fired as captain in 1981.

When I announced my resignation Alec Bedser [the chairman of selectors] said, 'We were about to fire him.' I thought 'You plonker!' To be brutal, the establishment was never happy some guy from an ordinary school in Somerset was captaining England. They were glad to see the back of me.

When the press asked me who should take over I said 'Bring back Mike Brearley.' They listened to me but bloody Bedser took the praise for that. The cheek of the tosser! How did he ever get a knighthood? So at Headingley I put up my finger at the establishment and the press and I came back into the dressing room after the fourth day, having scored my century [off 87 balls], and got out a cigar and had a smoke. I was knackered but, as for Bedser and that lot, I thought bollocks to you. I don't need any of you.