"Hallelujah John Tudor, John Tudor!" The emotional adulation used to roll down the St James Park terraces and over the Tyne during the super seventies. It was sung to the tune of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus from The Messiah. Ah, when football was high brow!

Maybe John was the sidekick to the strutting John Wayne of Malcolm Macdonald, Tonto to the Lone Ranger, but in reality he was much more than that. As SuperMac told all who cared to listen.

Now we have lost him, a true Newcastle United icon overtaken by dementia, reduced from a goalscoring hero to a man lost in a fog and finally, sadly, forced into a care home across the Atlantic where his last footballing journey had taken him.

The news that Tudor has died aged 78 hits all who treasured him like a hammer blow even though we all were fully aware of a declining path. Life can be cruel even if heroes are supposed to be indestructible. We had become dear friends, travelled together to the finals of a World Cup, shared memories, swapped yarns, and laughed ourselves silly.

Tudor was an often underrated player of intelligence for United who never let ego get in his way. The footballer's footballer.

His death in America where he had lived since his retirement from playing will strike deep into Geordie hearts. He and his devoted wife Anne regularly visited us despite the great divide of the Atlantic staying with Angie Stanger-Leathes, a dear friend of theirs and staunch Newcastle fan. John had undergone emergency surgery after suffering a heart attack in 2014 before being diagnosed with dementia, no respecter of dignity or fame. The passing of time can play havoc with any in its path.

I remember when he signed for Joe Harvey at Newcastle. We had dinner at the County Hotel the night before. Tudor later said in his autobiography: "I've considered John a friend ever since." Likewise fella.

He was so excited about joining "a big club." His contract was "great" - £85 per week plus £25 appearance money, a bonus depending on the size of the crowd, and another for being in the top five of the First Division.

"Sometimes I could earn as much as £200 in a week," he laughed. Wow, tell that to today's superstars.

Tudor went on to play in tandem with SuperMac who was signed later as United roared through to the FA Cup final of 1974. By the League Cup final two years later Harvey and Tudor had both been replaced but Macdonald has always insisted that John rather than his successor Alan Gowling was his ideal partner.

I took John, a great thinker on the game, with me to the World Cup finals of 1974 to cover soccer's showpiece for the Chronicle just after the FA Cup final. It was an experience that was greatly appreciated by us both as he revealed in his autobiography King For A Day. He asked me to pen the foreword for the book. It was a pleasure. England had failed to qualify and so we concentrated on Scotland travelling round Germany to different venues from our Frankfurt base.

"It was the chance of a lifetime," John wrote. "I was genuinely thrilled to attend one of the biggest sporting events in the world. I especially studied the forwards and it gave me a new outlook on the game."

I always felt that Tudor was a future manager and his partner SuperMac was not. Wrong twice. John wished to be and might well have been had he not gone to play in Belgium at the end of his career which meant he quickly became forgotten in club boardrooms in this country - out of sight out of mind - while Macdonald seemed far too 'jack the lad' to become a boss only to prove to be anything but at Fulham.

John played for Coventry City, Sheffield United and Stoke City as well as us but he made more appearances in black and white than any other colour - 222 games reaping 74 goals. Strong in the air and deceptively deft on the floor with a relentless work rate, his two greatest scoring seasons were 72-73 when he rattled in 24 goals, and 74-75 adding another 18 of the best.

King Tudor walked amongst us as royalty in his own right not just as chief support to a No.9 legend. I wish to remember John of the 74 Cup run, John my World Cup companion, John with Anne filling my life with fun and friendship. America never put distance between Geordies and a United hero.