Peter Nicol relishes telling the story of how he psyched out the Egyptian squash player, Ahmed Barada.

“He was the David Beckham of Egypt,” he says. “He didn’t get on with a lot of the other players because of his attitude. They would ignore him because he wasn’t the best character on court. But he had always said I was one of the people who had given him time.

“I was playing him somewhere; I was losing and he was getting into his stride.

“So I looked at him, and waited, and looked at him, and saw his self-confidence disappear. I ended up winning the match. I made him question everything in that second just by looking at him.”

This is an example of the mental strength that helped Nicol win 49 Professional Squash Association tournaments and four gold medals in the Commonwealth Games, and in 1998 made him the first player from the UK to be world number one — a position he held on-and-off for five years.

It’s a strength he says he thinks he got from his “simple” and “very logical” upbringing in north-east Scotland.

As a child he played tennis, football, badminton, cricket and golf, but squash was the sport that hooked him, and by the age of 20 he was training 11 hours a day.

Nicol, 35, from Hamp-stead, says: “I’d get up at 7am, go for a run, go on court at 9am, do an hour’s work on my own, then two hours with other players. Then in the afternoon it might be a match and weights.”

This gruelling training made him into a champion sportsman. But it also meant he missed out on other aspects of growing up.

“It was at the cost of my development as a human being,” he says. “Even if I went out and got drunk it was all about relaxing so I could carry on with training.

“To be around me must have been very tiring. Until I was in my late 20s, early 30s I didn’t have many friends, because I didn’t give much. My personal growth since I retired has been exponential, which it needed to be, because I was way behind.”

Since he retired in 2006, the dedication that used to go into training now goes into his various business projects, which include a company selling squash equipment and coaching, an events company and a sports club.

Now when he steps back into the world of professional squash players, he doesn’t feel quite at ease.

“It’s quite unpleasant,” he says. “Everyone’s just trying to win. I’m much softer than I used to be.”

Peter Nicol will visit Radlett Tennis and Squash Club, in Watling Street, from 3pm to 7.45pm, on Saturday, for an afternoon of junior and adult coaching and a question and answer session. Tickets cost £10 or £25 with coaching (children free). For more information, call 07887 560601.