In print, over wine, and perhaps even in song, let us celebrate the life of the sportswriter Alex Cameron - or as I shall always think of him, Lord Cameron of Strathblane - who has died at the age of 73.

Driving home from the Open Championship on Tuesday and being informed midway that Alex had died became a solemn moment for me. In this scurrilous, scatty, but always adventurous profession, I think most people knew of my great affection for ''Candid'', whose bold, brazen stories in newspapers and on television were such a part of my early, wide-eyed love of football.

I always refer to Alex as ''Candid'', though this, of course, is only the start of many complexities in recalling his life. In my own business he was always ''Chiefy'', though to the public at large he was ''Candid'' Cameron,

so-called after his straight, blunt, almost permanently-indignant columns which ran like gusts of wind in the Daily Record.

''Alex 'Candid' Cameron: Writing Candidly and Keeping you Informed'' was the strapline above his Record column, which more often than not was an adventure to read. As well as being a marvellous human being, one truth about ''Candid'' was that the spate of his writing often made you think some of his paragraphs had been shifted around, with some of his columns best read by starting in the middle, then moving to the top, and finally taking in the end. It is a policy that prevails to this day in the Record's premier sports column.

I adored Alex, like most who knew him, because of the zest and vigour he brought to the scene. I loved both his kindness and passion for work, the latter, especially, often expressed towards a colleague in some form of comical, trifling anger.

I recall one very vivid episode of Scotsport, which, as a 13-year-old growing up in a Baptist manse, I was sorely tolerated for viewing on the Sabbath. In this particular episode ''Candid'' was presenting a piece which duly cut away to a film package, during which something very evidently went wrong prior to returning to ''Candid'' in front of camera.

As a viewer, you knew this because, for a split-second, Alex was caught angrily shaking his fist at some off-camera technician, before very hurriedly, and in the most hilarious way possible, breaking into that beaming smile when he realised he was back on air.

Being absolutely angry about absolutely everything is now a tedious, devalued

art-form in the tabloids but, when ''Candid'' was writing his indignant columns, there was something fresh and often gripping about them. His writing style was a bit like a skier careering down a hill without any poles, wildly slaloming between points and arguments until the reader, let alone Alex himself, was out of breath.

And then - sheer heaven, pure bliss - you'd alight upon Alex's I HEAR feature, those little nugget-paragraphs in which ''Candid'' would invariably write: ''I hear that footy top brass and TV boffins are getting together to discuss a new telly deal for next season. As soon as I know the precise figures, as usual, you shall be the first to know.''

The famous envelope, of course, is now a part of the ''Candid'' legend, though I always found it quite a subtle writing technique as a teenager picking up the Record.

When Alex wrote: ''There is much speculation over who is being considered for the Aberdeen manager's job . . . I have the candidates' names in a sealed envelope in my desk,'' you almost wanted to believe, much like reading CS Lewis, that the envelope did exist.

Just imagine the envelope, in the height of darkness in the middle of the night, lying there inside Chiefy's desk at the Record . . .

As is the way of bereavement, I now have the sorest, bitterest regret that I didn't speak to him over the last few months of his life. My finest memory of ''Candid'' outside of work remains a four-hour lunch we enjoyed together two years ago, during which he laughed, scowled, berated, and gossiped his way through our sumptuous food and wine.

Being a younger journalist, his view of me was extremely modest and clipped in estimation. It was an appraisal, coming from him, which I prized.

Obituary, Page 18