WHILE back in England, I had a very pleasant and unexpected experience. One Friday evening a couple of weeks back, Ellie and I were about to enter Sujoys in Chorleywood. I could almost taste the jalfrezi in my enthusiastic anticipation.

When you are a curry devotee and live in France, believe me curries feature high on your most-missed list.

Ellie went in first, greeted by the manager, while I had to hold back. My mobile had rung. I answered and having been asked if I was indeed Oliver Phillips, I was informed by a distinctly Antipodean voice, that the caller was named Peter Clark.

He explained he was staying with his cousin who had provided my mobile number.

I thought that ironic. The cousin to whom Peter Clark referred was and still is the brother of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I ceased being her boyfriend in August 1963, so we are talking years back, but I bumped into her brother from time to time over the years and one day he asked me if he could attend my retirement “do”. So I contacted him when it was arranged and he duly attended, wished me well for the future but kept my number.

All this I worked out at a stroke while my caller was saying how much he had wanted to get in touch with me.

As a journalist you receive a number of calls from people who know people and usually they have a story to tell or want publicity. Even in retirement, the alarm signal kicks off in my brain from habit when I receive such communications.

“I want to give you a case of wine,” I heard the voice say.

Now, I “knew” I was going to be asked to publicise something and I was just preparing to point out that I was retired as a short-cut to ending the conversation, when he explained: “I have read you for years. I have followed Watford since the days of Cliff Holton.”

Anyone who has read me for years requires respect in my book, so I said the occasional “thank you” as the compliments came down the ether, and waited for the punch line.

“Now I have had my photograph taken with Graham Taylor and I want one with you,” he said, and I wondered if Graham realised he was not so exclusive as he might have thought.

I explained this might be difficult as my visits to England comprise a tight itinerary, comparable with plans for the D-Day landings in complexity, and we would have to meet as I was passing through. Usually I have just about enough time to buy a paper before we head for the next rendezvous.

“Well I realise it is short notice but I did an article with The Watford Observer this week, seen Graham Taylor and you are the last one on my list,” he said.

Suddenly I realised this gentleman (for anyone who wants to give me a case of wine can only be a gentleman) did not have an angle. He had already arranged his publicity.

As it happened, he phoned me again on the Sunday morning, as arranged, and, as we headed from my daughter’s in Watford to my sister-in-law’s in Princes Risborough, we stopped in at Sarratt to drop something off with another daughter.

Outside the Post office, stood Peter Clark, a former Army man who was also a Watford fan and had emigrated to New Zealand years ago and eventually opened a vineyard.

“I didn’t remember you being so big,” he greeted me. I replied that I had been this size most days since the 1956.

What a charming man, and how I wished we had the lunch hour free to find out more about his successful venture into producing wine from the Clark Estate, near Marlborough, New Zealand.

Apart from the sauvignon Clark Estate for the US market, he has Boreham Wood for the Australian market, producing some 10,000 cases, exporting to six countries.

His latest venture is Hornets a rather tasty and dry sauvignon blanc, the label unmistakeably in Watford FC colours and available at several SWHerts retailers. This is the wine he is currently publicising and placing. It is a must for the wine-drinking Watford fan.

Peter duly gave me a case of wine, we had our photograph taken and my wife and I said our thanks and farewells and headed up the road.

“He said you had the ability to make a game come alive in print,” Ellie told me.

I probably appreciated that comment even more than the wine for I had felt somewhat inadequate squeezing him in as I passed through Sarratt. I felt even better still when, upon seeing an old friend and Watford fan, I gave him a bottle of the wine. He promptly contacted www.clarkeestate.com found the name of a Bushey retailer and ordered a couple of cases of Hornets.

So I didn’t feel so bad about receiving a gift. In fact, after a bottle of it, I felt pretty good.