Ferguson has personal experience of the impact of dementia.<\/p>\n
“I have a situation myself, with my brother,” he says. “It’s not easy. I have to be in touch with him a lot. He recognises me [but] the memory’s not great.<\/p>\n
“But he’s not bad. He’s not getting any worse, let’s put it that way, which is very encouraging.”<\/p>\n
Asked if dementia is a subject that occupies his mind, Ferguson’s answer is affirmative.<\/p>\n
“It is, yeah, because I’m his brother,” he says. “I’m only a year ahead of him and I’ve only one brother so he is important to me.<\/p>\n
“It’s at the back of my mind all the time. You think, ‘I wonder if he’s in just now’, or if I should give him a phone [call]. I try to do that each day.<\/p>\n
“I keep telling him: ‘Write things down.’ I think he tries to do that, but he forgets a lot of the time.<\/p>\n
“When you get to my age, you do have a little worry about whether your memory is going to stand up.<\/p>\n
“I’m 84 in December and there are moments when I forget things. I probably did that 20 years ago, 30 years ago… no-one’s blessed with a 100% memory. But when it comes to football, when I was a manager, the memory has always been important. Now I do a lot of crosswords, I sing a lot and read.<\/p>\n
“I tend to go into history – the American civil war. I went to a few of the battlegrounds in America, which I really enjoyed.”<\/p>\n
Ferguson’s wife, Lady Cathy, died on 5 October 2023. The couple had been married for almost 58 years.<\/p>\n
“After my wife passed, I was stuck in the house a lot,” he says.<\/p>\n
“I moved house, into the country, next door to my son – but it’s not good enough just to sit watching TV, so I decided to travel. I went to Saudi [Arabia], Hong Kong and Bahrain.<\/p>\n
“Occupy yourself. Dealing with the dementia group has been good for me. It’s something that I enjoy.”<\/p>\n
Ferguson, who won 38 trophies during a 26-year tenure at Old Trafford, is still a regular at United matches.<\/p>\n