I’ve known Alan for around 50 years and as befits the name of the last academy, he was a pretty Unique or, as some would say, odd character. A few snippets of my time with Alan: Whenever he found a new sponsor for himself and Jo, he used to try and sell me his cast-offs. He once changed from Fred Perry and whilst I hoped for a retro, twin-tipped polo shirt, I rummaged through the enormous bag he had given me, only to find a pair of his heavily used, crimplene underpants. Without any hint of irony, he thought for a few seconds and said, “okay, you can have them for 50p”. Jo mentioned his hypochondria at the service. When i was 13, he was driving a friend and I back from a day at Wimbledon. We pulled up at a junction where he slammed on the hand-break, got out of the car and lay down in the middle of the pavement. “This is it, I’m having a heart attack” he said to us as he held his chest tightly. My friend and I stood over him, a combination of confusion and panic. We decided to knock on the door of a nearby house to ask for help. Alan was taken away in an ambulance and my dad had the difficult task of telling Vicky the news. “Oh no not again” she said and started laughing. We discovered this was his second 'heart attack' of the year. He was home within a couple of hours and devoured a huge chinese take-away. For the past 45 years, my mum would occasionally bump into the people who called the ambulance and they’d always ask “still going is he?”. Whilst we found each other through tennis, our friendship grew because we shared so much off the court rather than on it. No topic was off the table - tennis, football, politics, history and for a brief moment, again in my teens, he thought that I was genuinely interested in a detailed analysis of his daily bowel movements. Literally anything and everything was discussed with fervour and passion, sometimes a little too passionately. Just after his diagnosis, I went to his house for dinner with family and a few close friends. As I was leaving, he hugged me and told me he loved me. The feeling was mutual and always will be. I miss him so much even though he could drive my absolutely crazy. Rest easy my friend Nipper X

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