‘So you, you little c*** when I tell you to do something and you, you f****** big c*** - when I tell you to do something, do it. And if you f****** come back at me, we’ll have a f****** right sort out in here.

‘And you can pair up if you like. And you can f****** pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your f****** dinner. Because, by the time I’m finished with you, you’ll f****** need it. Do you f****** hear what I’m saying or not?'

John Sitton doesn’t manage any more.

Instead, what he does, is tell stories. Ones that meander like the Thames he now drives his London taxi alongside. Ones that are tinged with melancholy, fury and regret that have been gestating ever since he spat those words in the now infamous documentary, Leyton Orient: Club For A Fiver.

There’s some light in amongst the dark, a few fond memories of a hard-fought life in the beautiful game as well as the black cab.

Former Leyton Orient player and manager John Sitton poses in his Chingford home after speaking to Sportsmail about the fallout from one of the most infamous football documentaries ever made; Orient: Club for a Fiver

'You know, as soon as I met Jose Mourinho in my cab, I had an instant rapport with him,’ Sitton says in his family home in Chingford, in answer to a question about Orient.

'He got in my cab and gave me a £20 tip. I picked him up in King William Street with his wife and either his Mum and Dad, or in-laws, and I took him back to where he lives in Belgravia.

'I looked at him and said:''What are the chances of that!?'' and he smiled. I said,''no, not because it’s you, what are the chances of a Chelsea manager getting in a cab driven by an ex-Chelsea player!''. He asked me to tell him more and so I did, and a couple times he laughed and nodded as if to say ''you don’t f*** about do you!''.

Sitton was captured delivering a half time team talk to his players at half time during a 1-0 defeat against Blackpool at Brisbane Road in February 1995

Sitton lost his temper with his players and fired defender Terry Howard during his rant

The manager also offered to fight two of his players telling them they could 'bring their dinner'

WATCH - JOHN SITTON'S HALF TIME RANT (WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE):

But mostly, Sitton speaks like a man scorned. 21 years have passed since he gave the speech that made him a YouTube sensation, a decade before the platform launched.

'My main emotion when I look back now is embarrassment’, he eventually says. 'I get very emotional and that’s just the way I am. I like to think that I’m able to articulate myself, definitely where coaching was concerned as I was s*** hot, and I would have only gotten better. So in effect, I feel as though I have let myself down as I know I was better than that.

'There’s obviously regret there too. I paid the price in full.'

For the uninitiated, Orient: Club for a fiver aired on Channel 4 in October 1995, and documented the 1994/95 season at Brisbane Road. The club were losing £10,000 a week and were forced to reduce their squad to just 13 players to make ends meet. They were destined for relegation and the PFA were paying the wages.

Things were so desperate that owner Tony Wood joked in a previous interview that he'd sell the club to anyone for a fiver. A cult film was born.

The filmmakers were granted unlimited access for the entire campaign, and captured Wood's attempts to sell the club to eventual buyer Barry Hearn - who promised to deliver the club 'to the first division by 2000' - as well as the O’s many struggles on the field.

Sitton speaks passionately about football and about his frustrations at being exiled

The 57-year-old was a highly qualified coach and worked with the FA after leaving Orient

He believes he was wronged by those in the game, and admits he's still angry about not being given a chance for redemption after the documentary aired

But that's only a small part of the story. What captured the imagination of the public was Sitton and to a lesser extent his assistant, Chris Turner. He’s presented as a man out of his depth, as someone desperately trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic when it’s already on the ocean floor.

His oft-quoted tirade, which has become his legacy, captured a man in the midst of a crisis - one started by Wood losing all his money after his Rwandan coffee plantations were razed to the ground amidst a civil uprising that cost almost a million lives - and ended with Sitton being sacked, banned from the club and exiled from the game two decades later.

1-0 down at half-time against Sam Allardyce’s Blackpool in February '95 and exasperated with his team, Sitton sacked defender Terry Howard before offering to fight two of his players, Barry Lakin and Mark Warren. In an age where mobile phones and social media didn’t exist, the footage was gold dust and remains one of the most visceral examples of a managerial meltdown in football history that lives on to this day. Collectively, clips of the outburst have accumulated more than a million YouTube views.

Sitton poses in the kitchen of his home, which he shares with his wife in east London

The ex-Chelsea defender sits in front of his favourite pictures, which he framed himself

‘I’d given the team instructions beforehand, but they weren’t listening to me. Either Lakin or Warren came back at me. Maybe because I didn’t have a long contract I was suffering from a lack of credibility and I just went ‘boom’. It was an outpouring of the frustration and pressures I’d felt over the last 10 months. I was doing six jobs at once on my youth team contract.'

True to his word, Sitton did indeed give Howard his two-week notice and the defender left to join Wycombe Wanderers having made more than 300 appearances for Orient. The two men had been close and spent night outs drinking together. They’d played in the same Orient side in the late 80s and early 90s.

'I knew that I had had enough of Howard when I was walking into that dressing room, because Blackpool had recognised he was a massive weak link. He’d been asking for more money and a new contract for months.

JOHN SITTON: PROFILE Born: Hackney, October 21, 1959 Clubs: Arsenal, Chelsea, Millwall, Gillingham, Leyton Orient, Slough Town Appearances: Over 300 Clubs managed: Leyton Orient, Enfield, Leyton Current occupation: Cab driver Advertisement

'We haven’t spoken since he came into my office at full time after that game and I said: ''I think it’s for the best''. It was a case of putting him out of his misery and me being put out of mine.'

And what of perhaps his greatest catchphrase? You’d be advised to bring your dinner in order to listen to the full answer.

'I was an idiot who didn’t recognise his audience. I went too abstract. I saw a film called Colors starring Robert Duvall and Sean Penn. In one scene, Penn was taking the p*** out of Duvall - in the same way those players were doing to me - and he had enough.

‘Duvall says: ''You look at me and you see an old man who’s finished, let’s get in the ring tomorrow. And you can bring your lunch''.

'I went all abstract and nicked that, saying I could take both of them on. I’ll always stand my ground.'

But Sitton isn’t a violent vignette, caught in time forever by a film that ended his career in 52 minutes and 29 seconds. He had a long playing career before his short managerial one. As a centre-back for Chelsea, Millwall and of course Orient, he was the type of player that typified the English game before the Premier League millions came flooding in. He would then go on to achieve the coaching qualification that’s now known as the UEFA A licence, one step below the pro license needed to coach a Premier League side, and work with the FA.

The former defender is animated when re-telling stories from his days in football

Sitton, who now drives a cab, says that Orient are now in dire straits and could be relegated

He remains angry at how he was treated but says 'my wife saved my life' after leaving the game

He tells stories of being at the FA coaching centre at Lilleshall alongside Alan Pardew and Kenny Jackett, and working with the legendary Don Howe.

But the damage was done. After being sacked by Orient in 1995 after 10 months, he tumbled out of the game via brief spells with non-league sides Enfield and Leyton. He continued to work with the FA in the hope of getting another shot at the game, but it never came.

'I applied for every job that became available for 18 months up until 1997. School teachers were getting jobs ahead of me. I refuse to accept that people like Glenn Hoddle, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer know more than me because they had a more high -profile careers.

‘Since then I have had ideas swimming around my head that are driving me insane. They could revolutionise the FA but they won’t ever get heard because the FA is a f****** shambles.

Sitton has taken up smoking cigars as a hobby and keeps numerous humidors in his 'man cave'

'I don't often smile,' he says jokingly while posing for pictures after his interview

THE RISE AND FALL OF SITTON Playing career Chelsea (1977-1980): 14 games; 0 goals Millwall (1980-1981): 49 games, 1 goal Gillingham (1981-1985): 125 games; 5 goals Leyton Orient (1985-1991): 218 games; 8 goals TOTAL: 406 games; 14 goals Managerial career Leyton Orient (1994-95): P59 W11 D11 L37 Win % 18.6 Advertisement

His bravado masks the pain he felt. 'The depression kicked in as soon as the documentary aired,' he admits. 'I felt physically and mentally weak. There was a very short period where I couldn’t even walk down the stairs to make a cup of tea. I felt weak and emotional and I just wanted to stay in bed. I was unkempt, I looked like a forlorn Big Issue seller.

'It was because the realisation engulfed me. I had been too abstract, too emotional, too out of control.'

Football’s slight wasn’t just perceived either. Sitton recounts bumping into one of his former players, Vaughan Ryan, who admitted he ‘didn’t lift a f****** finger’ for his manager during his time at Orient.

'I bumped into Teddy Sheringham once and he couldn't believe how I'd been treated. He said to me: ''Sitts, what you did had happened in dressing rooms a thousand times before, and has happened a thousand times since. What was the big deal?''

He adds: 'After the Blackpool game I went and had a beer with Allardyce. You know what he said to me? He said: "F*** me... I thought I had it hard!''

'But I was toxic. People don't realise what I was dealing with at that club'.

Sitton now drives a cab around London, a job he took after leaving football in 1997

He now hopes to publish an autobiography which he describes as 'my own truth'

Sitton now spends his time driving around London, tweeting, and talking about anything and everything. He’s taken up going to the gym to keep his mind and body in order, and has picked up a habit of smoking cigars. He hopes to publish his autobiography shortly in which he’ll put the world to rights.

'My wife saved my life when I came out of football. She has a saying: ''Everybody has their own truth'' and this book is mine.'

Ironically, as Leyton Orient stumble from one crisis to another under new owner Francesco Becchetti, to whom Hearn sold the club in 2014, some supporters have called for Sitton to make a surprise comeback. As many as 75 per cent in a recent fan poll asked for him to return to his old stomping ground.

Cruelly, it gives him hope that his dream of a return is still alive, with acceptance still hard to come by two decades on.

Looking back at the documentary, filled with remnants of football’s ingloriously glorious past, of black boots clacking on concrete and men with mullets wearing double breasted suits shouting 'Sitton out!' from the old stands, it’s hard to escape the fact that that the game has moved on, but he hasn’t.

The film is a touching monument to football before the money arrived, and perhaps that’s why it remains relevant, or at least why fans are still interested in watching it. There’s no corporate sheen to the images, just a tired old club trying to get by as best it can with no money. And Sitton, for all his flaws, is authentic and real. That’s more than you can say of most these days.

Chris Turner, his assistant at Orient, is now Chief Executive at Chesterfield. Barry Hearn’s Matchroom group promotes some of the biggest boxing fights in the country. His former players hold positions in the game.

‘I’m still angry about not being given a second chance,’ he says as we wrap up an interview that could have doubled as therapy. 'They’re all there and I’m driving a f****** cab. I'm driving a f****** cab'. Where is the justice in that?