Once upon a time and in another country I saw Nureyev dance Le Corsaire. More than 30 years later, I still close my eyes and recall that performance - the Russian dancer's soaring grace, the awesome control of his body, his passionate intensity. It was the closest I have ever come to seeing the presence of the divine made manifest in a human being.
I don't remember any of the details surrounding the performance: who accompanied me to Covent Garden, what we did before or afterwards. I think I knew, because it was common gossip, that Nureyev was "impossible", that he threw tantrums and made excessive demands of other dancers and of the theatres where he chose to perform.
None of that mattered, then or now. What impelled a usually rather reticent London audience to its feet for a standing ovation, to look at each other with something close to terror, was the knowledge that we had just seen something miraculous on stage and that, as spectators, we were part of it.
Let's not push the comparison too far. Nobody, as far as I remember, ever suggested that Nureyev had a responsibility to act as a role model for young people or that the hopes of an entire nation were riding on those flying feet.
That is a new phenomenon which athletes like Roy Keane and David Beckham seem to accept, perhaps unwisely, as part of what goes with being a superstar. But watching Keane's interview with Tommie Gorman, I was struck by the fact that, as with Nureyev, words were irrelevant. Keane's body language told us what we needed to know.
I have been privileged in my working life to report on great historic events in this island. I know well that peace in Northern Ireland (which was not, incidentally, achieved by political leaders of uniformly sunny disposition) is far more important than any football tournament or stage production. Yet the memories which sustain my belief in the human spirit are not of the announcement that a deal had been struck on the terms of the Belfast Agreement, or of Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1985. They are of great performances by those whom we rightly call stars because they shed light upon our lives for years to come and in ways that we cannot fully comprehend.
BECAUSE my own trade is words, these experiences have been mainly in the theatre - Paul Scofield in King Lear, Donal McCann in The Faith Healer, Fiona Shaw as Electra. For others this necessary contact with something beyond the material world is channelled through religion or arts other than drama.
For many millions, it comes through sport, particularly football which cuts across creed, class and colour. We know that in Ireland, besides giving pleasure to many fans, it has helped us through times when questions of national pride and patriotism have been problematic, to put it mildly.
The vast majority of us cannot begin fully to understand what courage it takes for an actor or athlete to put him or herself on the public stage, hoping each day or night to achieve perfection, vulnerable to the slightest mishap.
Over the years, without any particular psychological skills, I've interviewed or talked to a considerable number of these sacred monsters. However great my admiration for the individual's gifts, the process has rarely been easy. More often than not, he or she has struck me as driven, obsessional, almost wholly self-absorbed and, to use the current jargon, quite pitifully "needy".
I remember a truly great English actor telling me how much he dreaded returning from holiday and opening his mail. This was before the days of mobile phones and instant electronic communications. If there were no scripts for him to read or other demands for his talents, he became immediately convinced that he had been forgotten, wiped from the affections of his peers and his public. I thought of him when Roy Keane told Tommie Gorman how hurt he felt, sitting alone in his room, that so few of his team-mates or members of the FAI had tried to talk to him after the bust-up with Mick McCarthy.
WHOLE forests have been pulped in the attempt to explain what the row between Keane and his manager means to us in Ireland and abroad. I am well aware that I am not qualified to enter that debate, though I have questions I would like to put to the man himself.
The only point I am trying to make here is that we common mortals owe a debt that we can never fully repay to those whom the gods have chosen as performing artists - actors, musicians, athletes. It is they who give us the stuff of dreams in our youth and memories in our declining years. We should value them accordingly.
So, given that we are all seeking "closure", what should we do on Saturday? I will watch the Irish team and will cheer them on in good company. My thoughts will be with our lost captain. In the evening I plan to go to the Gate Theatre in Dublin. There is a new play on by Frank McGuinness which I want to see anyway. But the main reason for my visit will be a personal act of gratitude to Alan Howard, the actor who has the role of Micheál MacLiammóir.
He played Oberon in Peter Brook's legendary production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. No one who saw that will forget him reclining on a trapeze above the stage, then swinging out towards the audience while his glorious voice transported us to Shakespeare's world of magic, human foolishness and lovers reconciled.