Ithink his name was Fred, the bloke who used to come into our bar in the far-off days when we ran a West Country pub. He was big and bluff with a broad chest and a face made ruddy by a surfeit of country air.

He also came with a country accent, the sort that grinds like chomped wheat at the back of the throat.

Fred used to drive down from Hereford where he had caravan and camping sites, always accompanied by his family.

The reason for the trip was to visit his dear old aged mother, who was living in a care home in Bristol.

He and his family refuelled en route at our place, filling themselves with hearty helpings of roast beef and enough wine to stay inside the legal limit – or failing that, getting their son to drive.

Fred's mode of transport was an old, but elegant, Rolls Royce. The car may have been posh, but the occupants were not; Fred was fun.

For a start, he wore wicked braces covered in naughty naked ladies. He loved to show them off to the waitresses and barmaids, making them snap against his barrel chest to hoots of satisfied laughter on seeing the girl's blushes.

Non-PC now, but back then the thought police were in their prams, so characters such as Fred were allowed to flash their pleasure in the nude female form and make rude jokes.

Big and bluff, Fred was ahead of his time on the communications front in that he had a mobile phone, not that you'd recognise it as such in these times of miniscule slivers of plastic that slide into your pocket. This was big! And I mean BIG! The size of an orange box, the phone would be unhitched from its nest in the Roller. It sat between the gear stick and the dashboard and was brought into the bar where it had to sit on a chair at the table with the rest of the family; it was too big to go anywhere else, more suitcase-size than pocket-size.

Why he bothered to bring it in at all, I don't know. Not only were there few mobile phones around in those days, there was no redirect facility that I know of. Apart from that there was no signal.

Come to think of it, Orange has only just got its act together around here as it is. The hills you see, they get in the way.

However, it wasn't a case of phone towers and hills in the way back then. Basically, there was nobody around likely to phone Fred except, I suppose, for the person he'd left in charge back at the caravan site.

Even if Sunday lunch had been slow, it was sure to quicken when Fred arrived. Fred and family filled the bar, mostly Fred, I suppose, with his height, his girth and his portfolio of dirty jokes. Besides that, he greeted everyone as though they were long-lost friends and when he left, the staff was treated to very generous tips. Fred was a millionaire and liked to spend what he earned, passing his goodwill along with his money to anyone who was nice to him.

If ever a man was unchanged by money, it was him. The world and everyone in it was his friend. Think Del boy from somewhere like Bromyard, a country boy made good, though to call him a yokel would have been a big mistake.

There were no flies on our Fred, that's for sure. Hale and hearty he might have been, but it took a shrewd mind to make a million.

I wonder whether he sold his holdings and headed for the sun. He'd fit in well, though not with the snobbish sort. Fred didn't do pretence.

He had the cash. He had the heart. I like to think he dropped dead at the age of 96 cracking jokes either in a bar or even the lounge of an old folks' home; it beats bingo any day of the week.

I only hope that he got round to changing his mobile phone.