A total of 24 nominations was received from those voting for the presentday columnist they rated most highly. Only four of those were women. One of the men, The Guardian's Hugo Young, died after the polling finished and his votes were transferred to the all-time section of the poll. Excluding Hugo's, 15 names were put forward as the “greatest” columnist of all time. Just one woman, The Guardian's Jill Tweedie, was nominated. Among those attracting wide support were Bernard Levin and George Orwell, who tied for second place. Remarkably, two of the remainder were nominated in both categories and these still-industrious writers soon emerged as the leaders of the pack in the present-day section of the poll.

It would be invidious to reveal the names of all the nominees from those still in business – if only to spare the feelings of the dozens of those whose names did not emerge at all in voting that produced unequivocal results in both categories.

There must be one exception to our no-naming policy: Alan Watkins, of The Independent but for a long time putting forward his trenchant views in The Observer, received support in the “all-time” category and was the clear runner-up in the voting for the most highly regarded contemporary columnist. The writer gathering most votes here – and tying with Watkins among the best-ever runners – was the indefatigable Keith Waterhouse, the one-man words factory whose twice-weekly column has been running for 34 years, first in the Daily Mirror and, since 1988, in the Daily Mail.

The columnist who was considered the greatest of them all was, perhaps, predictable. Certainly he recorded more than double the votes of his nearest challenger. The universally admired Bill Connor, aka Cassandra of the Daily Mirror, died in 1967 at the age of 57, shortly after receiving a knighthood for services to journalism.