JOAN Murray didn't have much truck with Douglas Bader when they first stumbled across each other in her bunker on a golf course 30-odd years ago. He had showed himself up by lobbing his ball into her sand trap but he did not look too shamefaced about it.

The widow remembers hearing the man with the booming voice before she actually saw him. At that stage, she didn't know the Douglas Bader story and was not much impressed by his bluster. It was months later - and many golf games later - that she began to see glimpses of the exceptional man behind the bravado.

"I didn't really know much about him when I first met him and I wasn't hugely impressed," says Lady Bader of the man she later married. "But it didn't take long for me to change my mind."

If he was a charismatic character, she wasn't a shrinking violet herself. And now, with her glamorous red lipstick and deep, healthy tan, there's nothing old and fusty about her and it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to see her as one half of a dashing pair with Bader.

As outspoken as she is playfully irreverent - she smiles in front of the camera and prefers to say "sex" instead of "cheese" - she seems to have the same refreshing spirit that Group Captain Bader, who died in 1982 aged 72, was famed for.

Lady Bader comes from a generation of ladies who take umbrage at revealing their age. "What on earth do you want to know that for?" she cries, and a no-nonsense attitude with which you do not want to argue. "All I'm saying is that I'm over 70 but you're as young as you feel."

Joan and Douglas remained good friends for about five years after their first unremarkable encounter as they were both married to other people. It was only after Joan's husband died and Douglas' wife died, that they got together romantically. And what made them such a sparky team was the fact that they were equals. He liked a strong woman to match his own feisty spirit and she would give as good as she got.

While he had artificial legs, he was physically as strong as an ox. Back in the late 1960s when golf caddies were nowhere near as popular as they are today, Bader would carry his own heavy clubs and the stumps of his legs would be red raw by the end of the day's play. But Lady Bader remembers him gritting his teeth and carrying on regardless.

"He was incredibly strong, both in spirit and in physical strength. He had loved rugby and if he hadn't lost his legs, he wouldn't have been playing golf, he would have been playing rugby for England."

She caught his infectious love of flying - they would go up in planes together and he taught her how to fly. She well can remember the day he was told he could never fly again, three years before his death, due to a series of minor strokes. "He did not often get down but he was in a state at never being able to fly again. It was his absolute love. He made me swear I'd never go up with anyone else after that," she says.

She has abided by his wish apart from one occasion when she went up with a commercial pilot. "I could feel his eyes boring in to me, telling me off. I haven't been up since and I'll probably never go up again," she says.

Joan was ecstatic when they married in secret in 1973. "You have to remember he was very famous and he didn't want a big fuss. He always felt privileged to be well known but, at the same time, he said there were hundreds of other men who had performed heroics in the Second World War. The only thing that set him apart from the rest, he believed, was that he had artificial legs.

It was his strength of spirit that attracted her to him and it is that which she remembers above all else as one of his most outstanding qualities.

"I never ever knew him to feel pity for himself. He blamed himself at losing his legs. He flew too low and the wing touched the ground," says Joan. "He said it was his own fault as he had been showing off in the aeroplane. Someone had made a remark before he got in the plane and he had wanted to show them what he was made of."

His passionate love of flying stayed unquenched even after his legs were amputated and, when war broke out, he immediately signed up with the RAF.

Despite the heroics that followed and the dramatic course his life took during the war years, Bader never liked to talk about his bravery. "As far as he was concerned, the past was the past and he was living for the here and now," says Joan, who has three children from her first marriage.

"My children would ask to hear his war tales but he didn't want to go over what had happened. He never read anything that was written about him and he only reluctantly watched the film based on his life story, Reach for the Sky.

Joan does say that he did occasionally talk about what motivated him to perform the heroics he did. "He was desperate to get back in a plane and fight for England despite his artificial limbs. And his one reason for escaping from the German prisoner of war camp was to be back in the midst of the action."

After their marriage, the couple travelled extensively, visiting amputees. His extraordinary story of losing his legs at 21 and going on to become one of Britain's best-known war heroes preceded him. He won his knighthood for his dedicated work with amputees and Joan says it was one of the proudest moments of his life.

"He worked very hard to inspire people who had lost limbs. He would encourage them to get up and live life and look to the future. I remember him telling me about when he lost his legs, he heard a nurse outside his door saying to some loud visitors, 'shush, there's a young man dying in there'. Douglas knew she was talking about him and he thought, 'I'm not going to die'. He had a true, fighting spirit."

After Bader's death, Joan helped establish the Douglas Bader Foundation to raise money for rehabilitating amputees through national golfing events.

The charity is on its way to raising £20,000 this year and Joan feels she is continuing the valuable job which her husband started. "He's up there somewhere watching down on me, I'm sure of it," she says. And then she adds, with her characteristic straight-talking approach, "I'd love him to be down here doing this work with me. But he's not and that's life. I've got to carry on."

* A book on Douglas Bader's life called Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader: An Inspiration in Photographs, is on sale from today at £29.99 plus postage from the Douglas Bader Foundation, 16 Kingfisher Close, St Peter's Park, Worcester WR5 3RY. For more information, email keith.delderfieldI'd never go up with anyone