If you happen to bump into them, as happened to me with the lately deceased England and Manchester United idol in an Abu Dhabi hotel corridor during the 2011 Laureus World Sports Awards, the instinct is to start. And you shouldn’t do that, as you don’t know where it will end.

Sir Bobby - as he had been since 1994 - responded with all the politeness and care I would have expected of him to my dutiful questions about England’s prospects of securing the World Cup for a second time following the glorious home victory of 1966 in which he played such a vital part.

I wanted to say…something…to him about what he had given to me and so many millions of other football followers…that sense of rising excitement as he flowed towards an opposing penalty area looking for the moment to let fly with one of the most powerful shots in the game …that thrill of seeing someone able to simply hit a ball so hard, so perfectly, and watching it fly beyond the momentarily pointless arms of a straining keeper…that satisfaction in watching him sweep a crossfield pass 30 yards to the feet of a team-mate – “pass it to a red shirt” as all at Old Trafford were repeatedly told.

But these were only the obvious things. There was something bigger and more noble about him which was harder to describe. It was about the way he carried himself, the way he behaved. As has been said, no doubt truthfully, when Charlton was in his pomp as a player during the 1960s "Bobby Charlton" constituted the two English words most widely recognised around the world.

Sir Bobby has passed into English culture. One of the most engaging scenes in the 1969 Ken Loach film, Kes, shows the young protagonist of the film, Billy Casper, enduring a school games lesson run by a blustering, bullying master played by Brian Glover, who proudly removes his tracksuit to top to reveal the Number 9 red Manchester United shirt made famous by Sir Bobby.

As he stands ready for the off in the windblown field, whistle to hand, boys of both sides standing, shivering, around, Glover announces: "Right, it’s Manchester United versus Spurs in this important fifth round FA Cup tie here at Old Trafford, and it’s the fair-haired slightly balding Charlton to kick off..."

After a vainglorious dribble through hapless children, No 9 closes in on goal…"and Charlton goes through!" before being brought to ground by a youthful foot. He scores after the keeper has caught his first effort. Amid protests he insists: "He moved. The referee’s decision is final."

Anyone interested in reading this will almost certainly already know the basic, unique Charlton story - the youthful brilliance, the training by his dubious but dedicated grandfather Tanner, his early days at Manchester United where assistant manager Jimmy Murphy drilled him relentlessly because he saw his genius.

The years - described by Charlton as "paradise" - when he was an emerging figure in the youthful brilliance of a team that won two League titles and threatened to sweep all before it at home and abroad.

The trauma of the Munich air crash of 1958, when eight of that team were killed, including his particular friends, the impish, snake-hipped Eddie Colman and the young Titan Duncan Edwards, who would kindly pretend that his shirts didn’t fit him and would give them to the young prospect from the north-east with whom he was sharing digs…

The unmatched pressure of carrying United’s fortunes as the club sought to recover, the glorious consummation of winning the European Cup in 1968, ten years after his friends had died returning from a match that had put them into the semi-finals of that competition, in a Wembley final where he scored a rare header and a coup-de-grace near-post flick in a 4-1 won over Benfica.

Another glorious deed on the same turf which he had trod as an England World Cup-winner two years earlier…

There’s so much to say, and so much of it has been said.

But here are some other random observations.

By chance I recently watched a re-run of his This is Your Life programme, where Eamonn Andrews would arrive with a wide Irish grin in front of the given subject who would immediately have to submit to a surprise broadcast all about their good self, with old teachers, friends, work-mates and relatives emerging at intervals from the wings bearing self-conscious smirks and cherished recollections.

Some, such as former Tottenham Hotspur captain Danny Blanchflower, simply refused to play ball. Charlton looked desperately as if he wished to do such a thing himself, but - as so often in his life – he quelled the instinct to shy away, to keep his privacy, and did what had to be done.

George Best, another genius in that United team, had a couple of cheeky digs about Charlton’s lack of hair and his habit of criticising him on the pitch if the ball was lost. But the dribbler supreme had the good grace to admit finally that Charlton’s admonitions had probably made him a less selfish player.

When the subject of the Munich air crash was brought up by our momentarily ungrinning host, both Charlton and his longtime manager Matt Busby, who had barely survived the crash, looked haunted. It was because they were.

Also noticeable was the warmth and love between Charlton and his wife Norma. As she momentarily brushed something off the shoulder of his suit he looked, for perhaps the first time in the broadcast, at home.

For all his dignified bearing on and off the pitch, Charlton had a great sense of fun. His natural gaiety was brutalised by the Munich disaster - but it would still emerge in later years. This is a picture I have in a scrapbook of 1969 which I have always loved, from The Guardian with credit sadly cut out by me - sorry if it was you, Mr Frank Baron - and it shows the side of Charlton less often seen in public.

Another random detail. In his 2003 autobiography, written with my late colleague Jim Lawton, George Cohen - Fulham’s right back who played in the World Cup triumph – recalls his meetings with Charlton when the latter played on the wing for United.

"Bobby Charlton was electric over 15 yards but he had a little characteristic which gave you a chance. Bobby would come to you with that lovely flowing action but you knew when he was going to push the ball past you, get round you and go for the cross. He gave a little skip, and that’s when I went with him.

"I had quite a lot of success…the skip had the effect on me of a starting pistol, and when I reacted properly he would disappear into the middle. I was very happy for that."

As he reached the rich conclusion of his career, all of Charlton’s most influential work, for United and England, came from central midfield.

He played as a winger for many of the post-Munich years not because he wanted to, but because his manager, Busby, deemed it necessary for the team’s success.

In the 1966 World Cup final, although he hit the post with one shot, Charlton’s role was muted by his unfamiliar marking role on the West German player deemed to be the biggest threat to England, Franz Beckenbauer – who it transpired had been asked to do exactly the same thing on Charlton by his manager Helmut Schoen.

Charlton didn’t want to, but because his manager, Alf Ramsey, deemed it necessary for the team’s success, he did it.

In his 2008 autobiography My England Years, again written with Jim Lawton, Charlton recalled Ramsey telling on the eve of the final: "If you do your job he will not do any damage, and I am sure we will win the World Cup."

Just a few days after scoring both goals in the glorious 2-1 semi-final win over Portugal, England’s inspiration was having to assimilate something of which he would never have dreamed.

Charlton wrote: "When he’d gone, I thought ‘Well here I am in a World Cup final, as I’ve dreamed about for so long, and when it comes I’m told to do a man-marking job - something that’s always been done to me throughout my career.’

"That was my first thought but then I had a second one….I told myself finally, ‘If we win, everything is justified.’”

Everything was justified.

After an initial goalless draw against Uruguay in their opening World Cup group match England had been booed by sections of the crowd as they departed the Wembley pitch.

A draw was not a disaster - but victory was required in their second group game against Mexico. For half an hour it looked as if England might suffer further frustration and censure.

But then Charlton’s genius changed everything.

“I watched every stride of Charlton’s goal," Cohen wrote. "It was beautiful to see.

"Charlton picked up the ball inside our half and gradually picked up speed, changing his feet and his balance as though it was the most natural thing in the world…the Mexicans fell back and Bobby surged on, changing his feet again before hitting a tremendous shot across the goalkeeper and into the far corner. The range was from twenty-five yards and quite deadly.

"By the time the ball hit the Mexican net it had turned egg-shaped. The goalkeeper, normally an acrobatic character named Ignacio Calderon, hardly moved. It was the classic Charlton goal. It was a sensation and brought our campaign to life quite magnificently."

Bobby, farewell.