It was easy to see how it must have been for Jonny Wilkinson. There we were, the rain lashing down, the wind howling in our faces, the cameras rolling, knowing types taking notes on the sidelines, and we, a selection of the press, so much happier taking those notes, were expected to send the ball, again and again, straight and true through the cruel elements, all the while under this insufferable pressure. To be concise and charitable, we were not managing it.

Then, from out of the gloaming strides Mike Catt, all smiles and joie de vivre and paternal assurance in the driving rain. He gently takes the ball from us, shows us how to hold it, how to let it fall, how to swing through it - in short, how to kick the thing properly. And, lo, the results were immediate and spectacular. Some of us even cleared the 22.

Catt was promoting 'Kick for an RBS Six Nations ticket', an interactive roadshow that is currently touring the city centres of the four home unions giving fans the chance to win tickets to the Six Nations through their kicking prowess. There were boffins from Loughborough University on the sidelines using the latest technology to analyse our quite various kicking styles. Boiled down, their findings were that if any of us (other than Catt) wanted to win a ticket to a Six Nations game, it was back to the press pass.

But back, instead, to Wilko. It may be presumptuous to liken our plight on a rainy January afternoon in Sunbury to that of Wilkinson in the first half of the World Cup quarter-final against Wales in Brisbane, but the bond that we now share with him is to know the relief of seeing Catt come to the rescue. Wilkinson was really struggling, which means England were as well, and Wales were leading at half time. On comes Catt, and, a couple of gentle words and 70-yard clearance kicks later, England are in the semi-final.

'You watch that Wales game,' he says. 'Jonny was fantastic. You look at his workrate - he was trying to do everything. He didn't have the help around him that he needed. All through the second half I was saying, "Just chill out there, mate, and I'll hoof the thing 60 metres downfield". We just bounced off each other again. And you need that as a fly-half. I needed it, and Phil de Glanville did it for me at Bath and with England.'

That famous Brisbane evening launched, or at least confirmed, the renaissance of Catt himself. From there he would go on to start in the semi-final the following weekend, be the last man to touch the ball on an even more famous evening in Sydney the week after that and then move on to London Irish, where he is flourishing at 35 years of age, as are the several talents around him, many years less of age. And now he is back in the England squad, called up by his old mentor from Bath, Brian Ashton, alongside another Catt protege at Irish, Shane Geraghty.

All this after a career that had already seen more than enough in the way of triumph and disaster. Born of an English mother, he came over to England from South Africa as a young chancer. He fancied playing a bit of rugby and quickly got a gig down in Bath. He made his first-team debut in 1992 and before he knew it he was the darling of what was then England's greatest club. Eighteen months later he was playing for England, where he dazzled from full-back, helping them to the grand slam in 1995 and winning a place for the World Cup in his homeland.

But then he got trampled by Jonah Lomu, and England gave him the goal-kicking duties and moved him up to fly-half. The pressure intensified, the kicks went wide, and the love affair soured. Charlie Hodgson may not like being booed at Twickenham, but it was because of Catt's travails in the mid-to-late 1990s that the Barbour brigade invented the idea of booing one of their own in the first place.

'You have a bad day, and you just don't know why it's going wrong,' he says, as he remembers those bad times. 'And the problem is you've probably only got three or four kicks to correct it. But if the first one goes wrong and everything else with it, it's bloody tough to get it back. And a lot of the time it affects the rest of your game.'

A smile develops on his face. 'The press sort of really disliked me in a way,' he says. The 'sort of' and 'in a way', you feel, is him being tactful, as members of the press hang their heads after he had just coached them with such patience and kindness in the freezing rain. 'But that's sport. They build you up and up and up, and then as soon as you've made a mistake they cut you down.'

Catt's smile fades as he remembers more. 'Probably two years, when I had the press on my back... that was terrible, just terrible. Because, the way I looked at it, people were perceiving what type of bloke you were through all the negative things they were saying. Then people would meet me and say, "You're actually not as bad as I thought you'd be".'

By then Catt was in the dreaded limbo of being a 'versatile' player. England stuck him on the wing at one point, before he gravitated to the position in which he would finally find redemption - inside centre. 'I wasn't an out-and-out 10, like an Andrew Mehrtens, or a Rob Andrew or a Michael Lynagh. I was more of a Stuart Barnes maverick type. Rather than taking a more controlling, kicking approach, I was always, "Right, it's time to go!" Now, though, I think it would be a completely different story.'

So does he think he could do a job for Ashton at fly-half? 'Yeah. I could play 10 or 12. But the thing with Ash is that he sees 10 and 12 as exactly the same thing.'

Catt is the kind of intelligent player that Ashton has long fancied, which means there could yet be more tales to tell in his remarkable international career. On the surface he appears to be vying for the inside-centre spot with Andy Farrell, whose inexperience in the code is well documented, as is his increasing brilliance as he continues to adapt. But Catt points out that the young contenders for No 10, Toby Flood and Geraghty, are also comfortable at 12. One thing is for sure, though - Catt stands out a long way as the most experienced midfield option available. And he is no longer afraid of the booing that now seems de rigueur at Twickers.

'Everyone has to go through it at some time or another. But at the moment the crowd is baying purely on penalty kicks. If those kicks were missed but we scored five tries it wouldn't be a problem. The crowd isn't getting anything from anywhere else, so they're focusing on this penalty miss and that one. And that should not be with the England side. We should be scoring tries.'

Ashton would be nodding his head vigorously at that, which puts Catt firmly in the frame for the Six Nations, and not just for saying the right things. He has formed the creative axis of many a side over the years intent on scoring tries, quite a few of them coached by Ashton. And, as Wilkinson will confirm - along with a handful of journos retreating gratefully back to the safety of their notebooks - he has a charming ability to bring the best out of people.