It was just over a year ago that this column carried an appreciation of James Alexander Gordon after he announced his retirement from reading out the British football results on BBC Radio.
Sadly, the Scot, known amongst friends by his initials JAG, passed away earlier this week from throat cancer at the age of 78. He will be greatly missed by those who appreciated his unique style which led to him becoming a true broadcasting icon.
It is worth recalling again his unique, if somewhat idiosyncratic, role in British football culture. JAG was someone who would have made reading out the telephone directory a dramatic experience.
His name would not be familiar to most people outside Britain. After all, he was not a reporter and 'only' read out the footy results, which one would have thought was hardly a job which demanded huge creativity.
But it was the way he read them which led to him becoming a veritable institution. The inflection he gave when he read out the home team would immediately indicate to seasoned listeners which team had won, or if it was a draw, even before he had got to the away team's name and score.
He admitted he introduced the inflections to make it more entertaining for listeners — and it worked. As one fan put it so well this week: "He told stories without using any verbs."
His voice was perfect for the job, even though, from a personal viewpoint, there were far too many occasions when he read out "Reading nil".
When he took over the job in 1973 it was a different era, of course. In those days there were no cellphones or internet and we had to rely on TV or radio for the results.
Before Gordon came along, the classifieds were read by a pool of BBC announcers and for many of them it was bit of a chore and sometimes sounded like it. However, one announcer, John Webster, displayed a particular aptitude for the job and became a semi-regular reader until Gordon's arrival.
Although it might seem a simple job, it is very easy to stumble over scores. The results had to be read in exactly 270 seconds and if they overran, the announcers were in deep trouble with the producers.
"I was terrified at first," admitted Gordon in an interview a few years ago. For trivia buffs, the first result he ever read out on the radio was "Arsenal 3, Manchester United 0," on Aug 25, 1973.
There were two main reasons why people were so interested in the Saturday afternoon results at that time. The obvious one was that they wanted to know how their favourite team or teams had got on.
But equally important was that millions of Britons played the Pools, a system of gambling on football results. The gambling was as much a national pastime as the football itself and the classifieds was the first official confirmation of how your predictions had gone.
That was why at 5pm on a Saturday, millions of people would tune in to the familiar jaunty strains of the Out of the Blue signature tune to hear the results, "read by James Alexander Gordon".
Reading the results inevitably carries with it the danger of getting tongue-tied, but JAG rarely slipped up throughout his long career.
One of football's great myths is that he once had to announce the tongue-twisting result from the Scottish League, "East Fife 4, Forfar 5''. It is a great story, but sadly just an urban legend. However, he did once have to read "East Fife 4, Forfar 3" which wasn't far off.
Because of this tale, Gordon will always be associated with East Fife and Forfar. Among his fans was the late comedian Eric Morecambe, who loved football and the two men became good friends.
"Eric would never call me James," Gordon once said. "When I saw him, he always greeted me with, 'East Fife 4, Forfar 5.'''
Gordon's stature has been reflected by the number of comedy shows that have performed spoofs of the programme. In The Two Ronnies, Ronnie Barker gets the inflections totally wrong as he reads out the results, displaying just how disastrous it would be if the job fell into the wrong hands, or rather, wrong voice.
There have been many tributes to JAG from celebrities and fans, most on similar lines of how listening to the results was a cherished part of their childhood memories.
As former England captain and BBC presenter Jimmy Armfield put it on Radio 5 Live: "He did it all with perfect enunciation. That lovely voice, with the little trace of Scots in it, with the highs and lows."
When JAG retired last year, Radio 5 presenter Mark Pougatch said: "Nobody else will be able to say Wolverhampton Wanderers with quite such mellifluous tones."
These days the results are read by Charlotte Greene, who described it as a "huge honour" when she took over from Gordon last year. She became the first female to announce the results on the BBC.
Of course, with all the modern technology available to fans, the classifieds do not carry nearly the same impact as four decades ago. These days most fans know the results within seconds of the final whistle. But there are still those who like to listen to them being read out officially on the radio.
And no matter who it is reading the results, many listeners will always hear the mellifluous tones of James Alexander Gordon in the background.