Muhammad Ali: the most talked about, the most loved and the most hated figure in sport

Muhammad Ali, who celebrates his 70th birthday today, stands alone among my sporting greats. Olympic champion in Rome in 1960, he was to become the most famous, the most talked about, the most loved and the most hated figure in sport.

In terms of pure sporting status he had no rival on the planet, and there are many alive today who would argue that any serious debate about the most famous personality of the 20th century, in any field of achievement, would have to start and finish with Ali.

You can imagine then how I felt when I met him for the first time in New York in the autumn of 1977. I'd seen him beat Henry Cooper at Highbury in 1966 when he was still a novice heavyweight champion but, 11 years later, he was one of sport's immortals having emerged from his three year exile to secure a new global nobility in the 'Rumble in the Jungle' and the 'Thrilla in Manilla'.

When I met him in the lift at the Statler Hilton Hotel, opposite Madison Square Garden where he was due to fight Earnie Shavers, he was surrounded by a Runyonesque entougage of large men in colourful suits and big hats.

I told him that we had a mutual friend. "Reggie Gutteridge," was the name I mentioned. He smiled. "Reg said that if I asked you nicely you'd give me a quick interview," I said.

"You's not as dumb as you look," he said. "Be outside my suite in 30 minutes." He was as good as his word.

Ali grew to love Britain and particularly enjoyed the company of the British media who had not derided him for refusing to join the US army. He had a special affection for Reg, the ITV boxing commentator who was reduced to tears years later when Ali made a special trip to visit him in hospital in Hammersmith.

Sadly, my only other encounter with Ali came 19 years later. Again I chanced upon him in a lift. We were at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 but this time he was a different man. The sparkle had gone. Conversation was difficult.

The punishment he'd taken in the ring was all too obvious, but he won a new generation of admirers when, with great courage and dignity, he lit the Olympic flame watched by millions of TV viewers around the world.

A mesmerising boxer, an iconic champion, a showman touched by genius, Ali has been an example to us all and it would be particularly appropriate in this, his 70th year, if our Olympic organisers remembered to invite this former champion and legend of the ring to London as a special guest. He'd love it.