It was late in the evening at the Royal Lancaster Hotel on the northern edge of Hyde Park. Guests from a Football Writers’ Association dinner were starting to stagger towards the taxi rank at the other side of the lobby when former footballer and Reading coach Wally Downes walked up to me.
‘You and me, outside,’ he commanded. I gauged he may have had even more to drink than me but even though he is a sharp, intelligent man, he was also a founder member of Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang and not someone I had any desire to engage in any form of fistic combat.