THE question I keep asking myself, and have done so since I heard the dreadful news, is: Why?
"Why Speedo didn't you give me or one of your other close mates a ring if you were feeling so bad?"
We'll never know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that Gary Speed was the type of person you could always go to if you had a problem.
He would be there to help or advise and provide a shoulder to lean on. Nothing was too much trouble for him.
Why he couldn't have picked up the phone for a chat in those moments before he did what he did, I'll never know. None of us will know now.
I have agonised a lot about writing this article and still don't know whether I am doing the right thing. I am still too numb to think straight.
But I suppose I want people to know what my mate Speedo was like.
A lot of people have paid tribute to him and I'm adding my own words.
I just hope, now, somehow he is able to see and hear how much people loved him, admired him, and respected him.
Maybe if he had known before...
I was with him on Saturday for most of the day.
We were at the BBC Match of the Day studios watching the Stoke v Blackburn game with Gary McAllister and Mark Lawrenson.
There was not an inkling of anything being wrong with him. He was his usual, bright, cheerful, mickey-taking self.
We talked about going on holiday to Portugal together with our families next year as we did last summer. We made arrangements for him to come and stay at my house next Friday.
We were attending a charity dinner in Newcastle and another in London on Saturday and planned to go down on the train.
When we parted on Saturday, we shook hands and he made some jokey remark about my golf. "See you next weekend" were his last words to me.
They were not the words of someone who was planning something so awful.
He was the same Speedo I had known for so many happy years.
On Sunday morning I had several missed phone calls from one of his other mates, who eventually got through to me and told me what had happened.
At first I thought he was winding me up and told him to stop messing around and not to joke about things like that.
I was expecting Speedo to ring up 10 minutes later and say it was all a big wind-up.
Then the reality sunk in that it was true but I am still struggling to cope with what has happened.
This is the sort of thing that you read about with other people — not one of your best mates.
I played against Speedo many times during my career and always rated him as a player. But I never really got to know him until Kenny Dalglish signed him for Newcastle.
He was a great acquisition for the team and gave the whole club a lift.
I warmed to him straightaway. As soon as he walked into the dressing room he lit up the place.
He was a man's man, a proper bloke, a genuine type, always positive, good for a laugh and someone you could always depend on.
If you asked for a favour he would always do it.
If you arranged to meet him at seven o'clock he would be there at five to seven. He was Mr Reliable.
In football, because of the nature of the game, there are bound to be fall-outs and arguments and feuds that develop over the years.
But I never ever heard anyone say a bad thing about Gary Speed. He never fell out with anyone
He was still a young, handsome man building on the knowledge he had gained in his playing career and making such a great job of managing the Welsh national team.
He had so much to look forward to.
I was looking forward to another fun weekend with my mate.
All I can do is sit around and try to make some sense of all this.
But we shouldn't be talking about our personal feelings or football's loss.
We should be thinking of his wife, his two sons and his mum and dad. They will be feeling the loss more than any of us.
I am struggling to put all my feelings into words now. I keep coming back to the same question. Why?
Why, Speedo didn't you just give one of us a ring?
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