The Half Moon in St Clements was certainly Oxford's smallest pub up until the 1980s. It probably still is today, despite expansion into what had been union offices next door. The picture above, taken in 1981, shows about half the 'trading area'. This is not an expression, I assure you, that would have passed the lips of landlord John Leaves, the man in the centre of the photograph, who was ever contemptuous of the jargon and conventional practices of business life.

As an illustration of this, I remember how Leaf (as he was always known) once asked if I'd mind popping to the bank to pay in "a bit of cash". My journey involved a number of 'poppings' into licensed premises en route, gaily swinging the money bag as I went. I was horrified to find on eventual arrival at the cashier's counter that I had been carrying several thousand pounds, a huge sum in those days. I'd been entrusted with the entire Christmas takings not only of the Half Moon but also of the next door Oranges and Lemons (now the Angel and Greyhound) which Leaf and his lovely wife Marion also ran at that time. Later, another customer was sent on a similar errand - and never came back.

You will gather that I was on excellent terms with Leaf. Who among his customers was not? Here was a man of whom it could truly be said that to know him was to love him. Though a Welshman - and fiercely proud of it - he was to be found as often as not in the company of Irishmen. Exiles together? Perhaps a bit; though it was the love of laughter, of conversation and of music - not forgetting the beer so important in promoting all of these - that provided the social glue It was one of his Irish friends, Noel Reilly - a famed local landlord himself - who telephoned me on Tuesday to tell me of Leaf's death. It occurred last week in Evesham, whither he had moved some 25 years ago with his partner Lynne. He was 66, which - as Noel and I agreed - was not a bad age for one who clearly had little ambition to make old bones. The funeral was two days ago. Unable to be there (Weekend press day), I offer this column as a small tribute to a man I feel privileged to have known, if only for a comparatively short period in our lives.

We first met at the Boot in Stonesfield, the pub (sadly now long closed) that Leaf and Marion renovated and ran with their friends Tony and Paivi Crofts. Leaf had previously been a hairdresser in a village near Cardiff. (He continued to wield the scissors for privileged customers - me among them - at the Half Moon.) This always seemed a most unlikely occupation for him, incidentally. But then who would have expected the Balliol-educated Howard Marks, his best friend in childhood, to become a baron in the international drugs trade? Leaf had met freelance journalist Tony through their mutual involvement in CND, and a collaborative venture in the pub business seemed a challenging career move for them and their wives.

Soon I came to know many of the Boot's customers, among whom the poet Dan McNab - often kilted, often drunk - remains the most endearingly memorable. Dan had introduced Pam Ayres to a wider public through the medium of his poetry programme on the fledgling BBC Radio Oxford. His jealous fury over her huge later success became a source of guilty pleasure for all who witnessed it. Dan's antics 'in drink' meant he was unwelcome in most pubs within a bike ride's distance of his Combe home, but he was always benignly tolerated at the Boot.

So, too, was another oddball talent, the singer John Otway, who I first heard, in company with his virtuoso partner Wild Willy Barrett, at a Christmas party there. That this took place in the middle of the summer was only to be expected in this offbeat establishment. John and Wild Willy continued to be regular entertainers - twice a month, in fact - when Leaf and Marion moved to the Oranges and Lemons in the summer of 1976.

This coincided with John's ascent to 'stardom' (the inverted commas are required), and with the rise of punk, in which development the 'O and L' played a seminal role. Aside from John and Willy's many performances, and those of the astonishing Ken Liversausage, the night I best remember featured Billy Idol. This came in the immediate aftermath of his success with Generation X and just before his emergence as a heart-throb megastar in the US. Chatting to him after the show, I found him entertaining and intelligent - a mile removed from the moronic image the punk label promoted.

What have I missed? So much, but I have finally to mention the O and L's amazing jukebox - and the Half Moon's conspicuous lack of one. Despite the rich assortment of pop to be enjoyed in the former establishment, it was curious to note how few tunes were ever played: Neil Young's Sugar Mountain is one song I shall forever associate with the place and The Doors' LA Woman another. Sometimes, as I put in a stint of 'guest barmanship' - as we termed my unpaid work at the O and L - I thought I was going to be driven mad by the incessant pounding rhythm supplied on this record by Jim Morrison and his band, which was played over and over again.

I do hope Jim is sparing Leaf the same torment in whatever afterlife they now share.