If Jon Parkin does little else during the next four weeks, he will at least, it appears, live up to stereotypes.

'Feed The Beast and he will score', goes the affectionate terrace chant directed at one of the Football league's stoutest strikers.

The Iron have already delivered on that front.

It is to a reception of schoolboy-like giggles from the gathered media that Parkin returns from his first United training session to be given the option of lunch before chewing the fat with reporters.

"If you don't mind," he responds, politely. "I'm starving."

When the Yorkshireman returns, he does so with a mug of coffee, before being led outside to speak to television cameras, in front of a back-drop of a heavily-covered Glanford Park pitch and the first, albeit, snow flurries of 2012.

Parkin is at home in the cold. It's where he has spent much of the past 12 months while on the books of Cardiff City.

Not for much longer, he hopes.

"I'm ready to settle somewhere. I have been for a while," explains the 30-year-old, who, when you include his handful of games for the Bluebirds, played for three teams during 2011, following loan spells with Doncaster Rovers and Huddersfield Town.

"I need to get come here, get some games, and hopefully some goals, and then we'll see what happens.

"I'm here for a month initially, but it could be for longer. I don't think it'll be a problem getting out of Cardiff until the end of the season.

"It's not happened for me there. I'm pretty much positive I'm not in the manager's plans, but that's football.

"Coming here happened quite fast, the main stumbling block I think was how much Scunthorpe were going to pay of my wages.

"Cardiff were more than happy to get rid of me, probably delighted in fact, but that needed sorting."

At a reported 13 stone, Parkin is a big man.

But he is an even bigger character.

He possesses the sort of reputation on the pitch to help United's current predicament and the personality off it to keep spirits up in a dressing room currently experiencing a second successive relegation battle.

Although this interview is only brief, it gives an insight into the Barnsley-born front man's humour from several angles.

"I'd rather get called that than some of the other stuff I sometimes do," he says when asked about his infamous nickname, given to him by his Macclesfield Town boss Brian Horton.

Before being converted into a full-time forward, he also featured at centre-back, playing alongside Iron assistant boss Chris Brass at York City.

"I used to dig him out of the s**t," he says, nonchalantly.

Now he must do the same to a Scunthorpe side that has slipped into League One's bottom four ahead of potentially season-defining games with relegation rivals Walsall, Yeovil Town and Rochdale inside the next 11 days.

It is not a challenge Parkin, now with the 11th club of a career that is perhaps best remembered for helping Stoke City to promotion to the Premier League, will shirk.

"It's no difference to me whatsoever," he says of Scunthorpe's position.

"Anybody who knows me knows I'm pretty much just a raggy lad who plays football.

"That's how it is. I'm not one of those big time so and sos.

"When I went to York, they were bottom. When I went to Macclesfield, they were at the bottom. When I went to Hull they were second bottom.

"I suppose you could say there's a trend developing. But I must be a lucky omen, or something like that anyway.

"All three of those clubs managed to stay up, so hopefully I can help make that four."

Of the 10 clubs Parkin has previously represented on his way to his current loan stint at Glanford Park, half have been in Yorkshire.

He reveals it no surprise too that, aside from a prolific spell at Macclesfield Town, they have been the more successful of his career.

 "I'm a bit of a home bird, I wanted to get back up north," says Parkin.

"It's been very tough. My boy still lives in Barnsley, so coming here means I'll get more time to spend with him.

"The happier I am at home, the better I'm going to be at playing football."

Scunthorpe United are primed to reap the potential rewards.