As I record these words, our world is digesting the news of the death of Neil Armstrong, the

first man on the moon, at the age of 82.

I've spent hours overnight listening to anecdotes from friends, journalists who met him

down the years, colleagues in the space programme, and I realised we really have lost a hero,

and according to everybody who knew him, a reluctant hero.

As a journalist, my first instinct was to hit the phones and call up as many people

as I know to see if I can put together tributes for the unexplained.

But I realised we're all media monitors now, so you'll have heard the tributes, and

you know his story, so there's nothing that we can meaningfully add here now I don't think.

But what I can say is a few reflections on why this man has such a part in so many of

our lives.

As a boy in Crosby Liverpool, I had his photograph on my bedroom wall.

I was captivated by the story of a group of men backed by fantastic technology, who

set foot on another world, they really did it.

And down these years, I wondered as we all wonder what that must have felt like, as you

step through the grey lunar dust and you look back at the distant blue globe that you

call home.

Do you feel amazement?

Do you feel a tinge of fear like a child lost in the supermarket?

Do you feel great pride?

In the size and scale of the achievement, probably all of those things.

18 months ago on this show, I asked Moon Astronaut Edgar Mitchell about that, and Edgar just

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