Walker my mentor

I first met Alexander Walker on the escalators in the Palais des Festivals at Cannes. He was going up, and I was going down, which is pretty much as it remained during the 20-odd years of our friendship. He was always there to pick me up when I was down.

He was the friend I rang in the middle of the night, the elegant, swellegant friend who danced with me wearing a white dinner jacket. His death earlier this week has left me inconsolable.

It was at that Cannes Film Festival - my first, his 31st as the Evening Standard's film critic - that Alex took me to lunch on the terrace on top of the Hotel Mediterranée with allthiscould-be-yours largesse. The terrace is an oasis of white canvas umbrellas by a swimming pool high above the noise and the people. Alex, having ordered grilled fish and two glasses of champagne in immaculate French, waved his arm over the bay - blue sea, white yachts, golden sand - and said: "This makes the Pitman's course worthwhile."

He entranced me. The fabled Alexander Walker, scourge of Kens Russell and Loach, militant anti-smokist, thumper of incompetent publicists (a reel once failed to arrive for the third screening of the day for the film critics in Soho and he flounced out saying, "I fear I cannot stay - I have a hairdressing appointment") was the bestest friend.

As a friend he had the inestimable virtue of being consistently reliable and totally surprising. It was as expected, on the day he died, that his fridge contained nothing but five bottles of vintage champagne; yet I was unprepared for a Shaker cupboard that concealed 78s of swing music. Ah-ha, so that's why the Presbyterian was such a good dancer.

What Alex relished was mischief, like all good journalists. And he was primarily a journalist, always looking for the story. That was why I loved him, he taught me so much. What he adored was standing up at the press conference after a Cannes movie and asking, in the most fabulously erudite way, why Robert Redford had made such a Horlicks of a film as The Milagro Beanfield War.

"Remarkable man, terrible film, Victoria, let us go and have lunch on the beach to get over it." And so we did. There were many lunches. "Le Caprice have taken over at The Ivy, Victoria, I think we should give them our support." And it was always the same lunch: the spinach salad, the fish of the day and the glass of champagne with the spice of news. "Margaret has been with Paul Newman, we are going to go to N"mes for Christmas." Margaret was Margaret Gardner, Alex's closest friend and the grande dame of film publicity at Rogers and Cowan before film publicity became a minefield of bossy intrigue.

I would get constant updates on Margaret's serene progress around the world from Alex - "Margaret is now on her way to Connecticut to stay with Paul and Joanne [Newman and Woodward], Margaret is going to Istanbul with Peter Ustinov" - and Margaret says she got exactly the same message service about my erratic progress. "Victoria is going to the Isle of Wight, I worry about her having to do so much cooking, but she will be back with us in September, providing all goes well on her safari in Africa. Such a dangerous continent, I don't feel she should be going there at all but, happily, Johnny is with her."

Johnny Raymond is my husband, whom Alex loved. At our wedding Alex did the most impressive re-enactment of Father of the Bride (my own father had died four years previously). "You have never looked so beautiful, what a wonderful service, what a marvellous time we are all having." He came with Margaret, and his mission, as always, was to make one feel terrific. He never failed, with his friends, to comment on something that made them look and feel good, whether it was a bag or shoes or a new haircut. And it didn't matter how old or young you were.

At our wedding my bridesmaid, six-year-old Sophie Johnstone, had just come hot from her appearance filming A Fish Called Wanda. "A lovely girl," said Alex, "destined for great things." Sophie went on to become head girl of Benenden, got into Oxford and is now working on a television series with Stephen Fry. "Well, what did you expect?" said Alex. We always called him Sir Alex, because we felt he should have been because he had lived so long and seen so much. Yesterday, in his study, I found the tiny placecards, miniatures of his book covers that I had had made for the dinner I gave for his 70th birthday, arranged along his bookshelves. "Sir Alex" was written inside the place card of his biography of Vivien Leigh.

Here was a man whose voluminous library included everything from books from Marilyn in Art to French philosophy to Nicholas Coleridge's Paper Tigers ("Fascinating. A clever young man.") to The Essential Woody Allen and, weirdly, The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll. His copies of Vanity Fair were meticulously filed and up to date. "I am very worried about Dominick Dunne, where will it all end?" When he died, he was rereading The Golden Bowl by Henry James.

I remember skiing with Sir Alex in Courchevel. With us he discovered the joys of a ski guide. "Imagine, he books a table for lunch both inside and out to allow for all eventualities with the weather. Marvellous, Victoria."