The former Scotland captain Barry Ferguson has launched an outspoken criticism of the Scottish Football Association, labelling their treatment of him "a joke" following the drinking and rude gesture scandal which led to him being banned from international duty last season.

Ferguson and Allan McGregor were involved in an all-night drinking session in the aftermath of Scotland's 3-0 defeat by Holland in March. Days later, the pair were photographed making two-fingered gestures while substitutes for the meeting with Iceland at Hampden Park.

Both players have been told they will not play for Scotland again but Ferguson, speaking extensively for the first time on the affair, remains upset with the way things were handled.

"If I could go back and change things I would, of course I would," Ferguson explained. "I should have gone to bed, and I should never have made the V-signs – when I see the pictures of that I feel so stupid. I looked like a daft idiot and I should have known better. But it was an error, a bad call.

"I made a mistake and people do that – I am a human being, not a robot and I made a costly mistake. There was no roaming about the team hotel bumping into guests, fighting in the bar or urinating in swimming pools like people have claimed.

"The thing that rankles with me now is the way the SFA handled the entire situation – for me it was a joke. I had played for Scotland 45 times, I had captained my country for years – and they sent a fax to [the Rangers training ground] Murray Park saying that I would never play for my country again. It was just the same statement they put out to the media, that was it.

"That just astonished me. The machine starts to ring, and in comes a fax from Hampden for my attention telling me that I would no longer be picked, and neither would Allan.

"The people in the room just looked at each other in total disbelief – is that how something like that should be handled? No one has ever spoken to me from the Scotland set-up. Not the manager, the chief executive, a PR guy, anyone.

"I was driving back into Murray Park after being sent home for a few hours and I heard on the radio that the SFA were going to ban me for life.

"I was in such a whirl that I wasn't taking anything in – then a fax arrives and that was it, over ... no phone call, no anything. That, for me, sums the SFA up. They don't know how to handle anything properly."

Ferguson was also stripped of the Rangers captaincy and suspended by the club at the time of the affair. He has since been sold to Birmingham City.

"What I would say is that Rangers handled the thing the right way," he added. "We sat face to face, I took my punishment and it was done properly. I wasn't happy, of course I wasn't, but I knew why the club had acted the way they did and I just had to go away and try to deal with it.

"But the SFA? That was a shambles for me. Then I hear a few days later [the SFA chief executive] Gordon Smith saying on the radio the door might not be closed, we could still play and all that sort of stuff. That sums it up for me, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing in that place."