I SPENT time in the pleasant company of a gentleman last week; a white-haired, young looking 73-year-old grandfather who has managed to do what intelligent people invariably do: that is, he has kept his mind open.

Let us call him David, because that is his name. In the midst of our conversation, the subject of Michael Phelps surfaced. “The news,” he said of the swimmer being photographed smoking marijuana from a bong, “was a great tragedy.” Mindful of his seniority, it was with some reluctance that I questioned his conclusion. “Do you really mean tragedy? If you do, it shows that you haven’t been father to teenage boys or young men for some time.” He was surprised to be told that so many of today’s teenagers and young men use pot. He found the news mildly shocking.

I smiled and thought of the opening lines to the Kris Kristofferson song, Blame it on the Stones. “Mister Marvin Middle Class is really in a stew/ Wond’rin’ what the younger generation’s coming to/And the taste of his Martini doesn’t please his bitter tongue/Blame it on the Rolling Stones.”

David, it should be said, was far from bitter. Yet there was the sense of an older gentleman wondering about the younger generation. What I loved was the wondrous innocence. Through the four hours we had shared, David had smoked many cigarettes. And as weird as it may seem, this is the question that struck me.

If David was my father and Michael Phelps was my son, for whom would I have the greater anxiety? It’s not a question that needs much consideration. “Pops, those things will shorten your life. Keep on smoking them and there will be a tragedy.” To Phelps, I would say: “It’s not the best way to socialise but I can understand why you experiment.” A lot of the time in life, you need to do the wrong thing to know the right thing. This is especially true for the young.

The shame of Phelps’ story came not in the act but in Marvin Middle Class getting in a stew. There was a sentence in a newspaper column that said: “Phelps has added his name to a long list of rich, arrogant, dimwitted celebrity jocks who can’t live up to their hype.” The remarkable thing about that observation is that the author was earning his living while making it. That’s ingenious.

There wasn’t much that was admirable in the efforts of the PR company, Octagon, to prostitute Phelps’ column-writing talents in return for the safe burial of the offending photograph. Three years of free swimming columns for one juicy photograph? If you’re the editor of the the News of the World, that isn’t much of a choice.

I laughed too when reading the comment of the Olympic swimmer eclipsed by Phelps: “I feel badly for Michael and the situation he has put himself in,” said Mark Spitz. The situation he has put himself in? For God’s sake, the guy inhaled a little pot. So too did Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Does Spitz feel bad for them or does he save his sanctimony for swimmers who win more Olympic gold medals than he did? What made Phelps so engaging during his eight-gold-medal miracle in Beijing was the sense that it was achieved by a human being, albeit one with a physique almost freakishly suitable for elite level swimming. You only had to listen to him to hear the ordinariness and the humanity.

He was the kid who suffered from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and who used swimming to wean himself off the medication prescribed by doctors and presumed to be lifelong. So much time was spent swimming that Phelps didn’t have any difficulties with hyperactivity out of the water. What was always an admirable pursuit was made heroic by Phelps’ extraordinary talent and his hypersensitive feel for water.

Our feeling for what he achieved was heightened by the perception of his humanity. It made his achievement believable and in today’s world of sport, that matters. Phelps’ agent, Drew Johnson, offered the usual PR spiel last week when promising that, “Michael intends to work to regain everyone’s trust”. Of course, it’s hard for an agent when a story threatens his client’s commercial value but the point about the bong story is that it confirmed our trust in Phelps’ humanity. He really is the young man he seemed to be in Beijing.

As for my new friend David, he told me he’s going to keep a closer eye on his grandkids from now on. The trick, I suggested, was to be there but not watching too closely.

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