I FIRST MET Kerry Packer after the Centenary Test in Melbourne in 1976-77. The media interest in the game had been so huge that I had had barely a moment's peace. I wanted to meet someone in the media with a view lo doing an exclusive deal. A friend, the former Aussie opener Bruce Francis, suggested I meet Kerry. It turned out that Kerry had one of his people Austin Robertson trailing me at the time with a view to arranging a meeting. Bruce and I went to Kerry's home in Sydney, where I told him what I was interested in, and it was then that he told me what he had in mind.

My first impression was of a bloke Who was very specific and dear about what he wanted me to do: to pick and recruit 16 of the best players in the World to play against lan Chappell's XI. He explained to me why he was doing this. I was a bit dubious about whether his idea 'had legs' because his initial motivation was to acquire cricket for his TV station, not to satisfy the needs Of cricketers. I got an undertaking from Kerry that I would have a job with him one way or the other. At that Stage I was 32 and I was approaching a benefit, the idea of which I hated because it's tantamount to begging.

I was looking for financial security for my family. Everything else was a bonus. It was obvious that World Series Cricket would benefit all cricketers who were being ripped off by the establishment. Kerry Packer had more influence on big-lime cricket than anybody who never held a bat. He dragged the game kicking and screaming into the 20th century and ensured its prosperity in the 21 St. Cricketers were ill-served by their masters. The politest things that can be said about the establishment when Packer came along was that they were naive, incompetent nincompoops.

My impression of Kerry was that he was very strong, would do the right thing by me and that he would support the people that had helped him. We became very close, would see each other     Big bucks: Kerry Packer and Tony Greig leave almost  every  weekend  and  would  go  on       the High Court after the first day's hearing in holidays  together.  For a while, if you  had                          September 1977                                    
overseas asked me what my plans were, I'd have said it depends what Kerry is doing.

He was a very smart bloke, with an investigative mind, a great lateral thinker, a non-drinker and had an incredible memory. 1 consider it a privilege to have been associated with him.

A BAR IN Adelaide, late. James Andersen had just bowled heroically against Australia in a one-day international on a steaming hot night and a colleague and I had draped ourselves around a glass of something cold when a large stranger loomed into view, looking for company.

He seemed harmless enough, "Gotta cigarette, mate?" he slurred. My friend was not in the mood. "Listen mate, we're tired. I've got a story to file and I could do without you bending my ear. OK?"

Not really, (said our new drinking companion, resplendent in flip-flops, large khaki shorts and blue 'single', as they are still called in parts of Australia. He was swaying a little, his belly acting as ballast as it bumped up against the tiled bar. My friend fled to his bedroom and his laptop. Fatman stayed.
                                                                                         Packer with the BBC's David Frost the
So did 1. Glad I did. Despite looking like a refugee                               previous June       
from the Salvation Army soup kitchen, Fatman turned
out to be one of Kerry Packer's chief livestock buyers, a substantial property owner in his own right and a well-travelled man with a wide range of interests and a couple of languages.

It was a perfect example of how appearances are often totally useless in placing someone in Australia's still largely classless society. Indeed, if you had taken Packer out of his suit and stuck him in fatman's kit, you would not have pegged him as the richest man in Australia.

We chatted for ages about his boss. Fatman, naturally, was in awe of Packer, "Fantastic boss, mate. Fantastic... As long as you don't bloody well cock things up."

Packer moved that way through his life. Everyman one minute, brutal, no- bullshit martinet the next. He was no oil-painting. In Australian argot some might have described him as having a "head like a beaten favorite", in fact. But his power and his wealth lent him presence.

He might have inherited more than his fortune from his father Frank who died in 1974, Frank, whose empire was built on the Sydney Daily Telegraph, spent a lifetime trying vainly to break into the snob-ridden inner sanctum of the Australian turf nobility. They wouldn't have him. When Kerry picked up the A$ 100m baton, he too found himself on the outside looking in- especially when he shook up cricket with his World Series. He didn't give a damn.

His in-bred arrogance and self- belief drove him on -and his keen gambling instincts. Few bet like Packer. There is one excellent anecdote, relayed to me years ago by a Las Vegas croupier, about how he dropped US $ 11m in one night on the baccarat tables there, then invited 11 girls up to his room to work off his frustrations. Packer denied reports of such a huge loss but was not so quick to turn down the story that he had taken a London casino for £7m in one night.

I badgered him for an interview at his suite at the Savoy in London a couple of years ago but, for a man who made his money in the media, he was never one for opening up in public. There were Packer rules and the rest of us could please ourselves. And, if anyone did get through the gates, he kept a revolver in his top drawer. He was not a man to trifle with.

As for his love of cricket, it was probably driven simply by the thirst for a buck. But what a difference he made to the game, from the technical wizardry through to unshackling players from their feudal past.

And how my colleague in Adelaide cursed himself for missing a night with one of Packer's best males.