There are three main schools of thought about Colin McRae, who died at the weekend in a helicopter crash.

There are those who think he's a made-up character in a highly successful series of computer games.

There are those - generally people who worked with him - who think that the 1995 World Rally Championship victor was a bit of an awkward customer, to put it politely.

But the other group is made up of fans, and participants at the lower end of motorsport, who had the greatest respect for McRae.

I never met McRae, but about five years ago it felt like I was stalking him. At that time I was writing a series of features about grassroots motorsport. This involved spending a lot of weekends standing in a field getting cold, eating too many burgers and talking to some of the most enthusiastic, dedicated people I've ever met.

And everywhere I went, it seemed that McRae had been there a couple of weeks earlier. Not because his sponsors told him to, not because he was promoting his games, but because he had an enduring interest in the same grassroots motorsport that I was busy researching.

When I visited a sprint contest near Ayr, for instance, all they wanted to talk about was the fact that Colin McRae had recently dropped in by helicopter. He'd chatted with them about their cars, about his superbikes, about the weather, about the burgers.  

And then when he competed with Skoda in the 2005 Wales Rally GB, my mission was to interview fans - many of whom had turned up principally because of McRae's temporary return to the WRC. Again and again, what they told me was: 'He's one of us.'

And there's not many multi-millionaires you could say that about.