Four years ago, this former Wolves midfielder received the call from Sir Alex Ferguson asking about Michael Kightly – in a car wash!

Then Grays boss Andy King told wife Barbara to ‘shut up’, convinced he was being wound up.

But after watching Kightly two days ago in action for Wolves reserves, the bubbly ex-Everton and Albion man is full of hope that the Molineux winger will return to the form that had the Manchester United manager on the phone.

King, now 54 and chief scout under ex-Wolves assistant boss John Ward who is managing Colchester, believes Wolves will get back the player they once had.

He said: “I looked at the boy Kightly and he’s got such character and bubbliness about him – get him on the ball and he can change the tempo of the game.

“I love that enthusiasm and almost cockiness in a player where you can see he’s enjoying what he’s doing.

“Kightly is still getting there at the moment after his injury, but we saw little flashes of what he’s capable of.

“I have no doubt in my mind that he will get back to where he was.”

To say the call from Britain’s most decorated manager came out of the blue for King was something of an understatement.

He said: “I was in the car wash when my phone rang and the wife answered it.

“She said, ‘it’s Sir Alex Ferguson,’ so I said ‘shut up,’ because I thought she was having me on.

“Anyway she persuaded me to pick up the phone and he asked me about Kightly.

“I’d only just taken the job a few weeks before after they sacked Frank Gray and ‘Kights’ was already out on loan at Wolves.

“So because he was out on loan, I hadn’t seen him play, which is what I told Sir Alex.

“And because the chairman told me a deal had already been done for him to sign for Wolves, that was that.

“But Kights came back to the club a couple of times after that to see the lads and he was a super kid – the lads loved him.”

Thanks to the scouting network of manager Mick McCarthy, Wolves were able to steal a march on United.

And King can’t help but admire the Wolves boss.

He said: “I’m a big fan of the manager. He’s operating at the highest levels of the game but he’s a gentleman who takes time out to shake the hands of all the scouts and greets them.

“When you watch players, you know they’re going to have a proper game against one of Mick’s teams because so many reserve games are poor.

“I admire him, he’s competing against people who have hundreds of millions of pounds to spend but he’s very knowledgeable.”

King is a similarly bubbly character now as he was as a goalscoring midfielder from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s.

As a League One scout, he needs to be – although his only concession to a heart attack two years ago was to swap the chief scout’s role he had at Plymouth for Colchester as it was nearer his Bedfordshire home and, initially, working for his first signing as a manager – Adie Boothroyd.

King said: “Don’t ask me about the Premier League – all I know is about the Premier Reserve League.”

After scouting Eastwood against Telford on Saturday, it was the Chelsea-Blackburn reserve game on Monday afternoon, then up at Telford to take in the second strings of Wolves and Manchester City on the Monday evening, before assessing Albion and Newcastle yesterday afternoon then driving to see Arsenal versus Sunderland that night.

But despite his ‘day job’ and the fact he lit up the blue half of Merseyside with his swashbuckling style of play in over 250 games at Goodison, heg admits his second footballing love is Wolves.

King played just 28 matches in gold and black and was only at the club from January to December 1985, straddling successive relegations from Second to the Fourth Division.

But his 10 goals made him top scorer in the ill-fated 1985-86 season and he loved the place.

He said: “I only really played really well at two of my clubs – Everton and Wolves. At West Brom and QPR, I had a nightmare. But at Wolves, the club had nothing.

“There was only two sides of the ground open and we had to nick the milk off the groundsman to have a cup of tea!

“But it was so laid-back, I loved it. Dot Wooldridge, the old secretary, would come round with the biscuits.

“It was fun in a way, but even though the club was in a terrible state, you were aware you were at a great club steeped in history and support.

“I’d go on holiday and people would ask what I did for a living and I’d say ‘footballer’ and when I said I played for Wolves they would ask all about the club.

“I still keep in touch with people from my time there to this day – the left-back David Barnes and I speak regularly.”

King would like nothing more than for Wolves to stay up – and Kightly to play a part.

Even Sir Alex wouldn’t moan at that.

By Tim Nash