‘We had such a laugh. I could get away with saying anything to Wattie. And he could say anything to me’
to talk to me and relate to my issues because he used to say to me: “Dick, I never managed in the diddy leagues...”
‘I phoned him one Friday night before a game against Airdrie where we had to beat them to win the league.
‘I thought: “I’ll phone Wattie for a bit of advice”.
‘He had won nine in a row for Rangers. Who better could I ask?
‘So I phoned him up and asked for a wee bit of guidance because I’d never been involved in winning a Championship. He says to me: “What one of mine do you want to talk about Dick? You’ll need a couple of hours...”.
‘My own wife would see us cackling and say: “What are youse laughing about?”
‘I could get away with anything I wanted to say to Walter. And he could certainly say anything he wanted to me.
‘We laughed and we laughed again. That was the relationship we had.’
In Scotland, male bonding is often forged through black humour. Subjects too difficult to talk about are dealt with by avoiding the subject or treating it as a joke.
That was the case when doctors found a cancerous tumour in Campbell’s kidney 11 years ago and cut it out ‘like a slice of cake’.
When Smith ran into problems with his health after his 70th birthday, the subject was never one for open discussion.
It was easier for both men to laugh in the face of adversity than sit down and have a serious discussion.
‘I do a lot of charity work and my main charity cause is dementia,’ reveals Campbell.
‘My mother died with dementia and I am chairman of the committee which builds sensor gardens for dementia patients through Fife Sensory Gardens.
‘One time I asked Wattie to come through to a fundraising dinner in Dunfermline.
‘Not only did he not charge a fee for his time, he actually put a right few bob in the charity kitty as well.
‘But you know the best bit. I was the master of ceremonies that night, main host with the microphone, and he just ripped the p*** out of me. Honestly.
‘He completely and utterly ripped the p*** out of me from start to finish. And do you know this? He was probably the only guy in the world who would have got away with that. It was like that for 53 years.’
Like Smith, injury cut short Campbell’s playing career in the senior game.
He returned to Fife to play for Hill of Beath Hawthorn at the age of 30 before falling into work as a coach at Brechin City, learning the ropes at boozy courses run by the SFA coaching centre in Largs.
Despite the club rivalries, Alex Ferguson, Andy Roxburgh, Craig Brown, Archie Knox, Jimmy Bone and Jocky Scott formed a band of brothers.
‘You would get Alex Ferguson or Wattie or Andy giving you a talk,’ he continues.
‘It would always end up being a wee soiree at the end. You would get a couple of drinks when the work was done.
‘One time we were in the bar when the miners’ strike was on in the mid-1980s.
‘Wattie and me had both known John Ritchie as a pal from our days together at Dundee United. And John was one of the miners who was on strike at the time.
‘Wattie came up to me in the bar at the time and he stuck £40 in my top pocket.
‘He said to me: “Here, make sure that goes to John”.
‘That might not sound much now, but in the 1980s that was a lot of money.
‘My weekly wage was £40 at that time. That was just the sort of thing he did and I’ve never ever forgotten that.
‘He didn’t make a song and dance about it. He did it quietly because he was a dignified man who looked after people in need.’
He was there again when Campbell — a lifelong smoker — contracted kidney cancer in 2010. Yet he somehow managed to outlast two of his closest friends and, because he did, he now makes a point of defying the passage of time.
Already past the state age of retirement, he runs his own recruitment company in Dunfermline and takes training at Arbroath.
Yet the process of holding back the tide becomes harder when reminders of his own mortality lurk round every corner.
‘What happened to Wattie makes me want to savour every day,’ says Campbell. ‘We all saw what he was going through and it wasn’t easy to watch.
‘I’m one of the lucky ones because I am still here.
‘I had cancer. I was a heavy smoker who used to get through 40 a day.
‘I have never craved another fag since the day I gave up and I wish I had never started.
‘One of the first guys on the phone when I was diagnosed was Wattie. You didn’t get the chance to feel sorry for yourself with that man. He didn’t allow it.
‘It was a pleasure to call myself his friend. Probably the last time I saw him socially was his 70th birthday. Honestly, you should have seen it, they were all there.
‘He had what you would call presence. He had aura.
‘I’m starting to get a wee bit humbled talking about him now...’
He’ll miss the rounds of golf at Loch Lomond or Gleneagles. The days of being wined and dined by his old friend at Ibrox have stopped.
However, the dream of marching up the marble staircase as a Premiership manager remain.
Four points from the summit of the Championship, Arbroath are punching so far above their weight they should be lying comatose on the canvas.
‘Don’t underestimate how well organised we are,’ adds Campbell ahead of a trip to Gayfield for his old club Dunfermline.
‘You can’t take three teams up through two leagues, win ten promotions and do it as long as we’ve done without doing something right.
‘But I am trying to keep our feet on the ground. I don’t want any adulation or pats on the back because we have done nothing yet.
‘As a man, Walter had so much humility. We can all learn from that, eh?’
His leadership qualities were obvious. We were in absolutely no doubt who was in charge