Christopher Gray remembers a personal encounter with the late David Coleman

It is generally assumed by friends and colleagues (they enjoy ragging me about it) that when some big-name celebrity pops his or her clogs I shall chip into the tributes with this column by supplying some personal recollection of the deceased. Let us not begin 2014 by deviating from the practice.

In the case of Peter O’Toole, among the recent high-profile stiffs, I am not able to oblige, his boozing having ceased on the orders of the quacks at roughly the time that mine began. I did once stand behind him in a queue at Gatwick airport, though, and thought how very ordinary he looked.

Over David Coleman, however, I can oblige. My long-ago encounter with him, as it happens, was well lubricated by the demon alcohol.

The event was a dressage competition in the mid-1970s on a farm beside Oxford’s Northern Bypass belonging to another Mr Coleman, Barry. David Coleman’s daughter was competing and the great man went along to lend his support.

Introduced to him by our sports reporter Bill Beckett, I spent the afternoon quaffing champagne in his company, to such an extent that there was no question of my driving home. Happily, the local beat bobby chanced by and offered to take me and my car (a policeman colleague following) the short distance to Stanton St John, where I then lived. Those were the days!

To end on a local note: Coleman’s residency on the BBC’s Sportview began the very day in 1954 that Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile at the Iffley Road running track. I have had drinks in his company too . . .