One of the most memorable days I have enjoyed in 14 years at Athletics Weekly was with Sir Jimmy Savile. It was the day before the Balmoral Road Races in Scotland in April 1998 and I found myself in a mini-bus with Sir Jimmy and elite athletes such as Paula Radcliffe as we travelled from one hotel to another as part of the pre-event preparations.

Having been a youngster in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was both exciting and surreal to spend a few hours sitting next to someone who I’d grown up watching on Jim’ll Fix it and Top of the Pops.

He didn’t let me down either. His trademark cigar was perched on the edge of his mouth all day and his non-stop banter was continually punctuated by catchphrases such as ‘now then, now then, now then’. He even offered some journalistic advice, saying that he would have no qualms about writing for as many publications as possible under false bylines if he was in my shoes.

The only mild disappointment, I suppose, was that he never actually appeared to smoke the cigar much. It was more of a prop that he pulled out whenever he met someone. I also discovered that many of the ‘marathons’ he bragged about were actually 10kms or half-marathons. Not that anyone cared.

At one point during the day we had to kill some time by waiting in a village near Balmoral for an hour. Rather than sit in the mini-bus, we went into a small coffee shop for a drink. Just me and Sir Jimmy – a very weird experience for a specialist athletics writer like myself!

Within minutes, Sir Jimmy had pretty much taken over the shop – I wrote at the time in AW that it soon became busier than Paul Tergat’s press conference the previous day. The owners rolled out the red carpet, so to speak, and treated Sir Jimmy like a bona fide legend. Rising to the occasion, he ramped up his act and charmed them with his chit-chat and catchphrases.

Most celebrities might tire of putting on a performance like this, but Sir Jimmy seemed to revel in it. On leaving, he whispered to me: “You know, every day is like this one and has been for 50 years. It’s great, isn’t it?”

The coffee shop experience aside, his devilish sense of humour was illustrated when Paula was trying to find a physio to treat a sore ankle and Sir Jimmy cheekily offered to massage her. Needless to say, Paula was  charmed and amused but politely turned him down.

On arriving in Aberdeen, too, Sir Jimmy’s driver had accidentally put the bags of a French businessman in the boot of his car, but rather than apologise profusely – as most normal people might do – instead Sir Jimmy joked: “We nearly got away with it! We were on the run from the law… wanted criminals!”

He was best known as a pioneering disc jockey and the ultimate Mr Fix-It on his popular BBC programme. But the running world was also blessed to have Sir Jimmy as a marathon-running charity fund-raiser for many years. For in addition to Balmoral in 1998, he was a regular over the years at other Nova International-organised events, the London Marathon – and many more.

Indeed, such was his popularity in athletics, when I tweeted the news of his death – ironically during the same Saturday teatime period that he used to dominate with Jim’ll Fix It – the message was swiftly re-tweeted by a dozen people, including Colin Jackson and Paula. Coincidentally, I also mentioned Sir Jimmy in a conversation with the Brownlee brothers – Alistair and Jonny – earlier this month and the triathlon duo said he actually lived very close to them in Yorkshire and they were often thrilled to spot him in their neighbourhood.

Unfortunately those random sightings will not happen anymore, but the memory of Sir Jimmy Savile will endure in the minds of everyone who ever knew him.