THE beautiful game has lost two luminaries in recent days, one I knew, one I did not.

As a child I sat glued to the TV to watch the 1974 World Cup and as a teenager, the competition four years later.

Thereafter, whenever I ran after a ball, and being honest that was as good as I ever got, I pretended to be a member of that great total footballing side of Dutch masters. I still think they were the best team never to win a thing.

Robbie Rensenbrink was my favourite, but Johan Neeskens was a close second. He died the other day and although I argue it's not always good to meet your heroes because I've been eviscerated by too many of mine, I wish I'd met him.

Peter Cormack, however, I did meet and had dealings with in the traditional football coach/sports reporter way.

A fine player for Hibs, Liverpool and Scotland and once we'd got the turgidity of the groin strains, suspensions and formations out of the way, a really nice man. Neeskens died of a heart attack and Cormack, predictably, of dementia.

Football is dangerous. Of that there can be little doubt. And there seems to be a very fine line between being super fit and overdoing it to the extent that the heart gives out.

Heading the ball is clearly a shortcut to dementia and the sooner it is removed from the game the better and safer it will be.

Although I quite like George Mallory's 'because it's there,' quip when asked why he wanted to conquer Everest a century ago, I am much more of the 'take only photographs and leave only footprints' school of the outdoors.

It may well be man's natural environment, but these days I'm more comfortable in front of a Helensburgh hearth, Speyside in hand.

And while reading this week about the apparent discovery of the booted foot of Sandy Anderson, Mallory's climbing partner, I happened on some really disturbing images of the mountain's summit and slopes.

Everest's so-called death zone has 300 bodies scattered around, perfectly preserved in the rarified oxygen-free, freezing atmosphere.

This shocked me, but clearly doesn't shock the hundreds of people who queue up to try to reach the summit every day and who blithely use each body as a landmark.

Given the altitude and extreme conditions I understand it must be difficult and dangerous to recover the dead, but surely somebody should try. Because they're there.

Those of you who have the dubious honour of knowing me will appreciate that I am the kind of guy who switches the gas off to turn over the bacon.

I was once asked what I did with my old razors and my response was that I shave with them.

The only reason I've got a few quid these days is down to the fat fee the Helensburgh Advertiser pays into my Swiss bank account every month and the fact that I successfully resist most temptations to spend it. I am also an incorrigible forest forager for free firewood.

Somebody told me the other day that there is a perfectly legitimate wheeze to avoid paying the egregious pick up and drop off fees at Glasgow Airport and that is simply to get deposited at one of the off-site car parks and use the free shuttle bus to the terminal.

In the midst of a cost of living crisis and with energy bills on the up yet again, every pound is a prisoner to one as parsimonious as I. Switch that light off, will you? And close the door.