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From Reverend Sharon Grenham-Thompson, vicar in Milton Keynes:

My daughter Maddie had a sleepover for her 10th birthday recently - yes they did sleep a bit! It was great watching these youngsters having fun and it took me right back to my own childhood days and the friends I had then. Most of them have dispersed across the country, even the world, and many I’ve not seen for decades. Some I’ve reconnected with through social media, and one special person has been my best friend all this time.

Childhood friends seem to live in a particular, golden glow, don’t they - bonds forged in a time of innocence, when we’re trying out who we are and where we’re going. The friendships that start in childhood but last a lifetime are perhaps the strongest bonds of all, seeing us through the best and worst of times.

Not all our childhood friends are human of course - the beloved pet, the scruffy teddy bear. For me, my ‘other’ best friend was the radio. I would take my little red transistor radio to bed at night, hiding it under the pillow, transported to another world. I felt as if I knew the DJs, their voices and catchphrases so familiar. Radio programmes helped me work out who I was and where I was going. And during the difficult times growing up, radio made me feel a little less alone in the world.

And here I am, all these years later, still best friends with radio and having the privilege to sit at a Radio 2 microphone - sometimes calling upon those childhood encounters that taught me so much.

Well, later today there’s the memorial service for Sir Terry - someone to whom we all owe so much, whether we knew him well, or only through the airwaves. He brought us humour, wit, and above all a sense of someone right beside us, cheering us on our way, in the good times and the bad. I listened to him as a child, and as an adult, often laughing like a drain. So to radio, and especially to Sir Terry, I’d like to say, ‘Thank you for being a friend.’