CHRISTOPHER Koch was a legendary figure for me long before I came to meet him. The legend took the form of one of Les Murray's memorable anecdotes about the character he referred to in those days as "my mate Koch." The year was 1976; Les and I were sitting in a coffee shop with a view towards a cheap hotel behind St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne. The hotel reminded Les of the visit to Melbourne by "my mate Koch" as the recipient of a Stanford writing scholarship. It was a long story, involving a pub crawl, a taxi and a grand mansion in Hawthorn where a befuddled Koch was discovered asleep in the master bedroom in the midst of a reception in his honour.