A writer of style and wit, he graced several Fleet Street newspapers and was an outstanding sports editor of The Observer, where he always kept a watchful eye in a superb column called Cyclops on the sporting underdog, and had little time for the fanciful and the sanctimonious.

I remain indebted to him both as a mentor and a mate. The alacrity and ease with which he was able to dash off a beautifully-crafted column on a Saturday afternoon after a lunchtime in the pub filled me with envy. He was an old-school journo who knew all the new tricks.

“Bags of swank but keep it simple”, he would instruct his match reporters. I remember how he once gently chastised a young correspondent who used the word dichotomy in his copy. ”Dichotomy?”, queried Peter. ”Who’s he, a Welsh full-back?”

A dyed-in-the red Welshman himself, Peter occasionally took no prisoners in a column which virtually has a smile in every line. When Sir Bob Scott, then in charge of Manchester’s failed Olympic bid, complained in an interview that the British sports media was not behind Manchester because they wanted somewhere more exotic to spend a few weeks, Peter mused: "I might have agreed with him had he not just stepped off a plane from Acapulco”.

Peter passed away aged 80 in June 2016 at a hospice in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, surrounded by his family, hours after watching his beloved Wales beat Slovakia 2-1 in Euro 2016. His son James Corrigan later tweeted: ”Just watched Wales win with my father in the hospice. At the whistle he said 'worth the wait' and went back to sleep. A lovely, lovely moment."

Indeed, and a lovely, lovely man.

The reason I write this is that James, whom I am proud to say I helped nurture as an aspiring journo when I succeeded his dad as sports editor of The Observer, has turned out to be quite a chip off the old block.

He is now golf correspondent and an equally-gifted columnist for The Daily Telegraph and last week wrote a compelling piece of which his father would have strongly approved.

It was about the Special Olympics. He reported that the Trump administration in the United States had abolished the $18 million-a-year funding for American youngsters to take part in these Games, thus denying some 272,000 kids with intellectual disabilities of the opportunity to try to emulate their counterparts in the well-funded Olympics and Paralympics.

When the cut was announced by Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy Devos, a lady whose personal wealth is estimated at $5.6 billion, as being necessary to control government spending, the Washington Post was apoplectic, pointing out that the $18 million Special Olympics funding was about equivalent to the cost of the President’s past five flights to his private golf club in Florida.

“Alas, Trump and DeVos do not and will not care,” declared Corrigan jnr.

As it happened, they did. Or at least they said they did. For while the liberal Washington Post is Trump’s main printed media adversary, which he he dismisses at the principal purveyor of his fabled Fake News, when Corrigan’s piece went online there was, by some coincidence, a sudden change of heart on Capitol Hill.

Possibly fearing more international opprobrium, The Donald made a swift U-turn, triumphantly declaring he had “overridden my people” and saved the Special Olympics.

Trump made the decision after he let Betsy DeVos spend three whole days taking the heat for the cut and defending it on Capitol Hill.

“The Special Olympics will be funded,” Trump blustered on the South Lawn in front of a group of reporters. “I just told my people, I want to fund the Special Olympics... I’ve been to the Special Olympics – I think it’s incredible and I just authorised a funding.”

He claimed he had just heard about the proposed cut – which has been a part of all three of the budgets he has proposed to Congress – on Thursday, and said it was ‘those other guys in his administration’ who were responsible for that idea, not him. How typical.

So all is well again with the Special Olympics programme in the US. But what about here in Britain?

As Corrigan goes on to point out, no Government in power would ever cut funding for Special Olympics Great Britain – because there is none.

While the Olympics and Paralympics receive almost £400 million in their four-year cycles.

True, there is a nominal amount from Sport England but this has never been guaranteed. Donations from corporations, trusts, foundations and individuals fund the 150 accredited programmes. Some 4,000 volunteers provide the coaching and competition opportunities in 28 sports.

There are an estimated 1.5 million Britons with intellectual disabilities and sport is a precious and beneficial commodity to their physical and  emotional wellbeing.

“But from the British Government – nothing. Not a murmur, never mind a cheque. It is a void that sums up Parliament’s enduring attitude to sport,” writes Corrigan in a trenchant article reminiscent of his old man’s prose.

The Special Olympics were created in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy, the sister of President John F. Kennedy. Since then, Britain has never offered to host. The cost would be £10-£15 million. A fraction of the price of a third-rate defender from Kosovo.

At the moment, SOGB is struggling to survive. That is a disgraceful situation.

OK, so the Maybot and her unmerry men may have more important matters to foul up, but someone should be telling the sports minister (do we have one, by the way?) to look into it. Time to play a Trump card. Sort of.