The anecdotes about Graham Taylor’s humanity and generosity of spirit have flooded in. You have to look no further than his writing of a personal cheque of £1,000 to help teenaged striker Gifton Noel-Williams cope with bringing up a baby with his girlfriend. Graham insisted that the act of generosity should remain private. It was typical of the man and that story was only the tip of the anecdotal iceberg of his private largesse over the years. Graham never lost touch and was always willing to greet and help his current and former charges.

His frustration at the prospect of losing Alan McInally to Bayern Munich resulted in his not speaking to the Aston Villa striker for two weeks before ending the stand off by writing down his private number on a piece of paper, handing it the player and saying that he was there if Alan needed any help or advice. There are many ex-professionals who had experienced similar support.

The open-handedness of Graham’s spirit was not restricted to Watford and there was a further moving example of gratitude. On touring the West Indies, Graham spotted Dwight Yorke, brought him back to Villa and bump-started a memorable career.

The player moved on to Manchester United and one evening en route to the Camp Nou in Barcelona, the thought struck Dwight as he faced the prospect of the Champion’s League Final against Bayern Munich that night. He duly resorted to texting Graham Taylor and thanking him for his career and making such a night possible.

There are scores of such anecdotes for Graham was open, friendly and happy to greet and talk to anyone with a smile. And he never forgot his roots. He remembered the sepia days of the 1940s and 50s: the voice of Vera Lynn, Sports Report and the tradition of singing Abide With Me before the FA Cup Final.

While Elton’s tears were captured on television as he reflected on the journey the club had made, when Watford reached Wembley in 1984, the hairs came up on the back of Graham Taylor’s neck as the crowd commenced Abide With Me.

One evening when he was invited to appear on Sports Report after a match, he readily agreed but asked if he could ring “my mum and dad” to let them know he was on this prestigious programme he had never missed as a child.

As for Vera Lynn, it was a sore point when he found out her autographed album had been ‘forged’ by his chairman. Graham was a sentimentalist and unashamedly so.

While the demands of the job dictated he did not spend as much time with his family as he would have liked, he was essentially a family man.

However, his wife Rita revealed he was not a home-handyman and had little patience. He kicked the wall once after hitting his thumb with a hammer and, on another occasion, kicked his wife’s car because he thought it had a puncture.

He took an interest in everyone and he cared. I was reminded by one of my daughters, Lucie, that she still has the get-well card she received from him after I had mentioned the nine-year-old would have to miss the Cup Final because of German measles.

Ok, his secretary, Shirley Evans, probably bought the card, but he signed it with a cheering message. To do that in the build up in the week leading to the Cup Final with so many things on his mind, underlines the fact he was “different class” as they would say in the dressing room.

When another of my daughters, Sophie, asked for his autograph, he signed her book and added his phone number, making her feel special because he added: “Keep it to yourself.” Think of the classroom credibility from those anecdotes.

He did things with style, for he was not just content with scrawling his name if he had time to do otherwise.

In essence, he was the friendly neighbour, the kind man next door, who always had a cheerful word. He treated people as he would like to be treated and that extended to telling a player if he was not part of his plans.

“He was dead honest with me. I would not be playing in his team again. I liked that. There was no bullshit about he might be needing me. That was it. He wanted younger legs. I could handle honesty and was grateful to him,” recalled Paul Merson last week.

So many of his former charges will claim he was “hard but fair”. Honesty, integrity and his oft-repeated mantra of “keep your standards high” were the key components of this multi-faceted man in all his dealings.

As former key defender, Steve Sims, told me this week: “Watford is strongly associated with Graham but there are a lot of people who swear by him in the Aston Villa area. He had a big effect on so many.”

And as McInally told Sky viewers, his caring for you did not end with a transfer out of the club. Tommy Mooney recalls: “I bumped into Graham and Rita in a department store in Birmingham. Rita went on shopping and left us sitting on a double bed in the bedding department for an hour. He loved talking about football and people.”

The chat he had with a delivery-man outside his house on what proved to be the last day of his life, epitomised the man. They sat on a wall and talked about football for ten minutes. He was always available and enjoyed the fact people wanted to talk to him. That was Graham: talking was his hobby.

He stayed true to his beliefs and found much of modern football hard to take. “If I see the ball going from one full back to the other full back via the centre halves and then back again, I change channels,” he admitted to me only recently. It was a more sophisticated version of his words back in 1981: “I hate arty-farty football.”

He would have enjoyed the words spoken by Les Taylor, his old here-there-everywhere midfielder. “I wish more teams played now like we did in those days. We had shots, goalmouth incidents and excitement. The crowd stayed awake. I hate a lot of the stuff we see now. It is like watching chess.” Many of his former charges echoed that sentiment to me over the last week.

They were glory days, exciting days and very rarely a dull moment. If we were unsophisticated, not appreciating the finer aspects of ‘the passing game’, as Watford’s critics claimed, we wallowed in our ignorance and enjoyed every moment.

He was a breath of fresh air for Watford and it is sad that we have rarely seen such excitement since. For those who did not witness it, try imagining Watford performing pretty well every week in the 1980s, as the Hornets did against Liverpool at Vicarage Road last season.

He enriched our lives and gave us all memories, which the carping critics at the time could not dim or destroy. I was happy and proud to watch and cover Watford in those days and we owed it all to Graham. We had a good relationship and I was proud of that.

One of his maxims was that “you can have no recriminations if you always give of your best. That’s all I ask of myself and my players.”

He gave us his best; he gave us the best and we loved it.