I first met Graeme playing 5-a-side football against him in Shell Centre in 1986. He later regularly reminded me that, during that match, I had embarrassed him by scoring a goal through his legs. However, I think he did eventually forgive me for this, as he subsequently appointed me and was my boss for two different Shell positions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one in Commercial and the other in Retail.

Years later, we became close friends, based not least on a mutual obsession with watching and following the Scotland football team – in particular, from 2010 to date, we attended almost every single Scotland match, following the team from Dublin to Tbilisi.

I last saw Graeme just two weeks before he died, when we had lunch together in Stirling. He seemed to have almost recovered from his recent health issues, so his passing has naturally come as an enormous shock.

There are so many things I can say about Graeme, and I have so many different memories and stories. I agree with the lists of Graeme’s personal qualities that I can see many other people have already posted here but I think what really stood out for me was simply his amazing intellect. He knew so much about almost any subject and, much more importantly, was then able to organise and express those thoughts in an extremely logical and comprehensive way. More than anyone else I ever worked with, or indeed have known in other ways, Graeme was able to tie together Goals, Strategies and Tactics in a way that could be understood by both senior managers and people lower down the organisation. Graeme also always stuck to a set of clear, overriding principles which he used to guide both himself and others.

As for Scotland football matches and trips, they will never be the same again. As we all know, Graeme was passionate both about the Scotland Men’s Team and, indeed, increasingly about the Ladies Team too. Many Tartan Army members, and especially myself, will miss Graeme very much indeed. In fact, my very last contact with Graeme was just two days before he died when we had a long call, mainly devoted to reviewing Scotland’s three very successful matches in late September. Those two wins and a draw resulted in Scotland’s promotion to the European Nations League top tier, which in Graeme’s and my view, of course, was simply the natural order of things…………