"Sure."

"A Coonawarra shiraz with your steak?" Silly question. The three of us provided some small quaffing support but another bottle was, of course, necessary.

The surprise, however, was not CH's legendary thirst, nor the vast range of his learning and his opinions, but his engagement, his courtesy, his interest in his fellow diners' views on literature, on politics, on the world and on Australia. Rhyming book titles and ditties on philosophers were interspersed with pointed, provocative and opinionated commentary. We left with our shiraz-numbed minds reeling, while Christopher returned to his hotel and no doubt to his mini bar, only to emerge a few hours later on our television screens in lucid and devastating form as he dominated the Q&A debate.

At the weekend, the Opera House was filled to overflowing to hear Christopher discuss not just God, or his absence, but any other topic Tony Jones could throw at him. And he achieved his ambition, bursting into song in the Opera House with a hilarious ditty about the great philosophers, with most of whose work I'd wager he was closely familiar.

When the news of his cancer came, he not only greeted it with equanimity and courage, he tackled it through his strongest weapon...his words. Few have written so movingly, so bravely and with such self-awareness about coming to terms with impending death. The announcement of a 'Pray for Christopher Hitchens Day' must have caused him more than a wry smile. "Don't bother unless it makes you feel better," he said. There could be few less likely deathbed conversions.