A few months back a good friend phoned to tell me he’d just heard that Shane Stedman, the legendary surfboard manufacturer and bon vivant of the surf culture, had passed away about a fortnight earlier.

I thought, that’s not possible. Shane always made a lot of noise. When he goes we’ll know about it. So I called him in Crescent Head and he picked up. A scratchy old voice said: “Still here, mate.” But he confided that his time was nearly up, and that he was at peace with that, and would exit on his own terms. We had a long talk about life, love and friendship, and we said our goodbyes.

So I wasn’t shocked to wake up on the other side of the world to the real news a few weeks after our conversation, but like so many in our surf world who knew this human dynamo, I was deeply saddened, even though at 85, you can rightly say, well, he had a good innings, as many have said in tributes everywhere. (This applies until you reach about 80, when you start to think, hang on, I’m not done yet!) This was as true of Shane as anyone I’ve ever known. He remained a force of nature, even when the lung disease which had affected him for so long began to dominate his daily life.

Shane and I had been friends since the ‘70s, first meeting at the inaugural 2SM Coca-Cola Bottlers Surfabout, billed back then in 1974 at the dawn of pro-surfing as “the richest pro contest the world has seen”, with a mighty seven thousand bucks on the line. I’d just come from the depths of a London winter, and as a new reporter at the Sunday Telegraph, I’d yet to adjust my work attire to ...