A FUND has been launched in memory of a grandfather whose battle against Parkinson’s disease led to him befriending Muhammad Ali.

Alan Smith, who founded a string of businesses including an Oxford pizza delivery company and an ice cream firm, died last month aged 72 after fighting the illness for 30 years.

Now his wife Margaret, 68, has founded the Alan “Smiffy” Smith Memorial Fund to raise money for national Parkinson’s charities and local centres helping people with the disease.

This month she presented the fund’s first £500 cheque to Didcot Day Centre, which Mr Smith attended before he died.

She said: “He never gave into it – he fought it.

“His doctor said he had never known anyone who had coped with it for so long.

“He was never down with it.

“He always had a smile and a joke.”

In 1992, Mr Smith met fellow Parkinson’s sufferer Muhammad Ali at a book-signing in Oxford, instantly striking up a friendship. The boxing icon used to phone him at his home in Didcot to chat about their experiences of the disease.

Mrs Smith said: “When he got excited, Alan’s hands used to shake even more, so I used to hold the phone up to his ear while he spoke to him.

“They couldn’t speak for long because it was difficult for him, but he was a great hero to Alan.”

The father-of-five and grandfather-of-eight was well known in Didcot and Oxford as the entrepreneur behind a string of businesses.

For a decade he ran the Byron Tearoom in St Ebbe’s, Oxford, with his wife, before founding Pizzas To Go, the first home-delivery pizza company in Oxfordshire.

He set up and ran Oxford Ices, and was a partner in Wantage’s Golden Chef restaurant in the 1970s and Didcot’s Rio nightclub in the 1980s.

Childhood friend David Hyde, 71, said: “He was always thinking of new things to do.

“He was so generous all his life, he didn’t leave a lot of wealth behind, but his motto was almost to spread it all around.”

To donate to the fund, call Mr Hyde on 07833 338672 or write to 36 Wallingford Street, Wantage.

lsloan@oxfordmail.co.uk