In the days of my youth, Reader's Digest - to be found in every dentist's waiting room - each month carried a piece entitled 'The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met', and occasionally I have wondered who in my life would best fit that bill. If in the end I would go with my great friend Denis Jenkinson, many others are worthy of consideration, not least Robert Ramsay Campbell Walker, whose passport famously listed his occupation as 'Gentleman'.
'To any who don't know you', I said to him one day, 'that smacks of affectation', and he agreed. "I know - but what else could I put? Apart from racing - and the war - I've never done anything..."
Always self-effacing, Rob sold himself short. In the PG Wodehouse sense of the word, he was emphatically 'a gentleman', but there was rather more to him than that. Anyone with whom he was associated, most notably Stirling Moss, will tell you that, for all his languid 'old money' drawl, Walker was far from a dilettante.