I learned that my oldest friend in boxing, indeed, in sport per se, Bobby Neill, the former British featherweight champion, died of COVID-19 aged 88.

Bobby and I go back a long way, right back to the 1950s in fact, and have been lifelong friends. He had been the oldest surviving British champion until coronavirus landed the ultimate KO yesterday night.

He was one of the fight game's old school, a true gentleman of the ring. Talented, dedicated and respected throughout the hardest industry of them all.

Following his ring career the Edinburgh-born Scot carved a successful career for himself as a manager, coach and trainer, arguably the best of that breed Britain has ever produced.

He was admired by his pugilistic peers not least the great Angelo Dundee, who masterminded the progress of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and many others in the way of the sweet science.

Bobby was his British disciple and his book, called simply Instructions to Young Boxers, was a classic of its kind giving lucid instructions both to young amateurs and pros.

It was Bobby who inspired me to pursue out my own career in boxing writing. I was a cub sports reporter on a newspaper in South London when I was sent to cover my first pro fight at Streatham Ice Rink in July 1958. Topping the bill was Bobby Neill, fighting a Belgian named Aime Devisch whom he dispatched in six rounds with a sharply delivered left hook that had become one of the most powerful pieces of armoury in the featherweight division.

I interviewed him afterwards as he was then living locally and we struck up a friendship that endured for well over half a century. He came to my wedding. My late wife and his first spouse Laurie, a professional dancer, became firm friends too, but tragically she was to die in his arms from a brain haemorrhage while in her 40s.

After he beat Devisch, Bobby went on to become the British featherweight champion, dropping fellow Scot Charlie Hill to the canvas 10 times en route to stopping him in the 10th round in Nottingham. Unfortunately when matched with the world champion, the brilliant American Davey Moore, it was brief and brutal with Bobby knocked down four times within a round.

Nonetheless his story remains one of the most remarkable in British boxing. In 1951, aged 18 while returning from an amateur training session in his hometown, where he was a trainee accountant, he was run down by a motorcycle and suffered a career-threatening shattered hip. He battled back to star for Scotland’s international squad 18 months later.

In 1957, the year after winning the best young boxer of the year award, he was seriously injured in a car crash and told that he would never box again by surgeons who had shortened one of his legs. But he stormed back to win that British title.

I covered the majority of his contests and was in his dressing room at Wembley in 1960 when he collapsed after clashing again with the 1956 Olympic flyweight gold medallist Terry Spinks to whom he had previously won and lost. It was a harrowing fight with an even more harrowing aftermath. After being KO’d by the relatively light-punching Spinks he was rushed to hospital for an operation to remove a blood clot on the brain. He was in a coma for seven days and close to death, but thankfully recovered though never to fight again. Bobby had succumbed to a quickfire but not apparently hurtful barrage of blows, and sometime after he revealed to me why. He said he was terribly hydrated. He had starved himself for three days to make the nine-stone limit. More crucially his only liquid intake came from a pebble he sucked incessantly to create saliva, which he swallowed.

Yet within five years the redoubtable Scott had embarked on a new career as a world-class coach and corner man and manager of some of the nation‘s finest young prospects, among them Frankie Taylor, Alan Rudkin and Johnny Pritchett. He steered Alan Minter and Lloyd Honeyghan to world titles. He was Minter’s atrainer for 11 years and guided him to victory in Las Vegas over Italian Vito Antuofermo. He changed Minter’s still amateur-like style, eliminating the "Boom" grunt whenever Minter landed a blow.

He was also in Honeyghan’s corner when he became one of the first British boxers to win an undisputed title on American soil, sensationally defeating the great Don Curry in Atlantic City.

Bobby retired as a corner man many years ago because of incipient arthritis which made it difficult for him to clamber in and out of the ring.

More years than I care to remember he was my principal guest at the Boxing Writers' Club annual dinner and well into his 80s, despite the odd memory lapse - who cannot relate - he remained as dapper and dignified as ever, and barely a few pounds over his fighting weight.

Bobby leaves his Italian second wife Marie and two grown-up children. He also leaves us with many happy memories.