I was shocked to read that Colin McRae has died in a helicopter crash. I don’t think I would call him a hero of mine, but I was certainly in awe of him to a certain degree when I was a kid.

My dad was one of the organisers of what was then called Special Stage 21 of the Scottish Rally, on Drummond Hill near Kenmore (and which now forms part of the Colin McRae Forest Rally). My friend Finlay and I would be left to our own devices to amuse ourselves until the stage opened, when we’d find a decent vantage point on the inside apex of a bend and watch the cars shoot past. Back when we were really young, we’d occasionally hear a Group B monster’s ear-splitting snarl long before we saw it; eventually it would crackle and pop past us during a downshift, then hurtle back off into the forest. This was a bit before McRae’s time though, and it wasn’t until a few years later (probably the very early ’90s) that we saw him in the flesh.

Now at this point, Finlay and I were rather nerdily obsessed with radio controlled cars. Finlay had an off-road buggy, and I had a rally-style Ford Sierra Cosworth replica, complete with scaled-down alloy wheels and rally tyres. We were happily racing them along a cordoned-off branch in the track when Colin McRae walked up the main access road beside us. He stopped and looked over at us, where I had my car’s bodyshell off to put a new battery pack into it, and said cheerily, “You’ve got the wrong tyres!”

“Gee thanks, Colin McRae,” I thought petulantly, “what do you know about radio controlled cars?”

What I said out loud was, “Mumble mumble,” after which he wandered off back up the road. I indignantly told my dad what Colin McRae had said to me, and of course he sided with the career rally driver.

So despite being humiliated in front of my friend (and dyed in the wool RC-car competitor) Finlay by this up and coming rally driver, I was always strangely proud whenever I saw Colin McRae on Drummond Hill after that, even though I never spoke to him again. It’s sad when one of your childhood memories dies.