Raise a glass to the monarch of the counties

Locally, Foot remains a cherished eminence as columnist and champion of causes. His deadlines, too, have been met spot-on as a sharp and perceptive Bristol theatre critic down the years and, on a thousand winter Saturdays, 600 words on-the-whistle from City, Rovers, or his hometown Yeovil, where it all began 64 summers ago in 1945 on the weekly Western Gazette. The trainee 25-shilling-a-week copy-boy, just 16, tremulously cycled in from the family's East Coker cottage in his new broadish-brimmed brown trilby hat and six-guinea brown pinstripe suit fresh-off-the-peg of Yeovil's high-class outfitters, Messrs Bone & Flagg.