David Foot: Words of the demon writer are reprised

It is true to say that over the years I became some kind of modest authority and witness to the flaws in the lifestyle of the late Alan Gibson – and was at the same time an unceasing admirer of his unique brilliance as a highly personalised cricket writer, Test match broadcaster and man of rare scholarship.

He regularly lost himself at the end of a day's play at Weston's Clarence Park, where every exit looked the same and the last drop of whisky had long been drained from the Johnson's babies bottle he kept as an improvised reserve supply.

Alan would be bundled into my car and we made it to the nearest train station. Endearingly, through his incoherent conversation, he still liked to make sure he had with him his notebook and fountain pen, the daily tools of his wayward trade.

He was apt to give me a rough time when not, in his kindly moments, offering much encouragement and advice. He tried without much success to involve me in his habitual exchanges with gatemen and stewards, as well as the dozens of bores he hated as they offered him fawning homage.

Alan, the academic, would pull me up for my suspect syntax and the frenzied journalism of a freelance. Once at Taunton, where he had been missing for most of the day, he returned to the press box and wrongly – and very noisily – accused me of taking his seat. Eventually, after the most embarrassing of scenes, he stormed out, only to come back minutes later, put a hand on my shoulder and say: "Sorry, old chap. I've put a double up for you at the Stragglers' Bar".

Despite his unpredictable bad moods, we spent hours together. They were always illuminating for me – and were mostly up to lunchtime. As far as I remember, he drank only doubles or occasionally trebles.

This week, a handsome new book "Of Didcot and the Demon" was launched, appropriately at his old village pub, The Star, in High Littleton (Fairfield Books, £20).

Partly it has been written, with affection but much honesty by his son, Anthony. Above all, though, it is a record of Alan's own words, taken mostly from his distinctive reports in The Times for 20 years, some of his finest and funniest pieces.

Anthony doesn't spare his father; he spells out the paradoxes. "He could be perfectly charming – and an utter bastard. He could be generous to a fault and vicious to a degree."

The compliments outweigh the human weaknesses of this gifted man stumbling towards alcoholism and wretched decline.

The arcane title of the book, published by the cricket-loving Stephen Chalke of Bath, offers us the flavour For Didcot was the railway station given cult status in Alan's narrative of missed connections and too many early-hours on Didcot's bleak platforms. Readers used to buy The Times simply for the latest railway station episode.

Similarly there was the Demon, Colin Dredge, a loveable beanpole of a fast bowler. Author Gibson took to this Somerset man with the uncoordinated action and the amusingly demonic style.

So he did many others like Jack Davey and Vic Marks. Technical achievement was to him less important than the whims of personality. He'd pick up on the human quirks, throw in a classical allusion and still find time for a canny comment on the day's play. The literary gems are all here.

Alan lost his job with The Times – he was inclined to be too cavalier about deadlines or confirming his locations for the day – and the BBC Test Match panel. This son of a Baptist minister certainly got into scrapes.

He was banned from driving; there were the rows with newspaper sub-editors and BBC top brass. "He could moralise about the sins of the flesh with all the fervour of a dissenting preacher and then go out drinking and womanising…"

Yet this isn't a sad book. It makes us chuckle all over again, as we realise how much he changed the blandness and statistics-sated cricket reporting, replacing it with an entirely different style.

My own favourite memory is of the evening he was sent to Ashton Gate for a gimmicky cricket match. The Times wondered what he would make of it. In fact, he arrived late amid grumbles as he climbed all the steps to the rear of the stand. From that point he went into a withering monologue about what he saw as absurd cricket experiments.

I'm not sure whether anything got into the papers. He left at the interval – in search of a drink, no doubt.