In 1944 a young Scottish corporal staggered into Brussels a few hours ahead of the liberating army. For weeks he had occupied the no man's land between the advancing allies and the retreating Germans, calling in targets

to shell.

Surrounded by adoring Belgians anxious to shower him with gifts, he waved aside all their offers of food, drink, and women (things in later years he would never refuse again). What was it he wanted, they asked in consternation. ''Sleep,'' said the young corporal. And he lay down on the pavement and slept.

When, several months later, he was sent back through Belgium after the defeat of the Germans, he saw posters up on every street corner of the capital - a photograph of an anonymous British soldier liberating the city. A hero. And he realised it was him.

Isn't it strange how often those who have the most influence on our society are unknown to us? In a country obsessed with the fleeting glamour of celebrity, the names and faces which appear on our television screens and in our newspapers are more familiar.

The name Tom Wright may not mean much to most people in Scotland. But as a poet, dramatist, and television writer he had a profound influence on Scottish cultural life during half a century of prolific creative output. He died this week, aged 79, and had travelled a long road since

freeing Brussels from German occupation.

Born of humble, working-class roots in Glasgow, he drew no distinction between what was literary and what was popular.

In 1965 he penned the definitive and ground-breaking one-man play, There Was a Man, which celebrated the life and work of Scotland's Bard, Robert Burns. The Glasgow Herald described it as ''a glorious work''. The Daily Express called it ''a brilliant piece by a brilliant writer''. The Daily Record said it was ''beautifully written''.

In the eighties, Tom created Take The High Road's Mrs Mack, a name which is still recognised today in every Scottish

household.

I worked with him very

closely for nearly 10 years, writing, storylining, and editing Take The High Road in the eighties, when it achieved an afternoon network audience of 6.5 million. He was to a very large extent my mentor and teacher, and I learned from him as much about life as about writing. He was a great exponent of both. He pulled no punches when he wrote, and he knew very few limits when it came to living.

When I first met him in the seventies, he was Pharic McLaren's script adviser during the golden era of TV drama at BBC Scotland. I was trying to sell a series idea which Tom told me in no uncertain terms would not work. For a time I harboured a burning resentment. Rejection is never easy to take. But time is not only a healer, it also brings perspective. I grew to realise that he had been right. The first step on the road to enlightenment is recognising when you're wrong.

Tom was hugely generous with his time and talent, but was sparing with both when it came to fools. A ''writer'' who had been bombarding him with awful scripts received a letter acknowledging receipt of his latest work with the immortal words: ''I received your script today and will waste no time in reading it.''

In the late forties, the returning war hero felt the need to write about his experiences. Poetry was his medium then. But not one that would make him a living. So he turned to the art of stained glass windows, and there are churches all over Glasgow where daylight still illuminates his work today.

He had a long-standing association with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and in the fifties a whole generation of Scottish actors and musicians became familiar with the bearded figure who would sit scribbling in a corner of the Ivanhoe bar in Buchanan Street, a cigarette and a whisky in one hand, a pen in the other.

In 1963, at the age of 40, he took an MA at Glasgow University. From there his writing career took off and he clocked up well over a thousand screen and theatre credits in the next

40 years.

In the mid-eighties he wrote the acclaimed one-man play Talk of the Devil, a biting religious satire which won him a Festival First award at Edinburgh.

I know he regarded the High Road years of the 1980s as among the happiest of his life. Then in his sixties, he still had an unquenchable appetite for writing, cigarettes, whisky, and women.

He smoked 60 Players Navy Cut a day. Story conferences were shrouded in smoke and littered with his cigarette ends.

He consumed large quantities of whisky - one of the skills he passed on to me. I still remember vividly he and I - two grown men - drunkenly shouting ''The Leith Police Dismisseth Us in the middle of the road outside the Leith police station, and then running like schoolboys when a burly sergeant appeared.

He claimed that women adored him, and he was rarely seen without one on his arm - usually half his age. He did, indeed, seem to possess an almost Svengali-like charm when it came to members of the opposite sex. Except, when on one occasion in an Edinburgh pub, he told me loudly for the umpteenth time that women adored him, and a large lady thundered along the bar towards him demanding, ''What did

you say?''

''Women adore me,'' Tom replied.

''I don't,'' she said, and turned on her heel. It was the only time I ever saw him lost for words.

When told in January that he was terminally ill and had only six months to live, Tom dismissed the offer of chemotherapy, declaring that he had lived a long and happy life smoking, drinking fine whisky, and enjoying the company of beautiful women - why spoil the last six months?

Tom had always been a confirmed atheist.

When I spoke to him just 10 days before he died I asked him if he still doubted the existence of the afterlife. He thought for a moment. ''I figure it's probably about 50-50,'' he said, and who could blame him for hedging

his bets.

Whichever way the coin fell, I do like to think of him somewhere beyond the clouds, surrounded by adoring women, a cigarette and a whisky in one hand, a pen in the other. Our loss would surely be heaven's gain.

Tom Wright, writer; born 1923, died May 28, 2002