THERE were cameo appearances from Gordon Reid and his gold and silver Paralympic medals at the 'Andy Murray Live' event at the SSE Hydro on Wednesday night, enough to prompt the man himself to fish his own Olympic gold medals out of his kit bag. While the 29-year-old from Dunblane was never likely to be upstaged at his own sell-out charity do, Reid is one of the few men on the planet who had a more sensational sporting summer than he did.

The younger Murray sibling might have ended up with a Wimbledon singles title and Olympic singles gold to his name from the summer of 2016, but Reid can match those two and raise him a Wimbledon doubles title and an Paralympic doubles silver, both in the company of Alfie Hewett, the young Englishman who he also defeated in the singles final in Rio. He is also the current World No 1 in his chosen discipline - a feat which Jamie savoured at one point this year but which the 29-year-old from Dunblane has yet to experience at any point in his career. Who knows, Reid might well have added a US Open title or two if the competition hadn't clashed with the Olympic one.

"I keep the medals under my pillow at the moment," Reid told Herald Sport. "I don't let them out of my sight. Everybody was asking me before Wimbledon which title I would prefer most - Wimbledon or the Olympics singles - and my jokey answer was that I wanted to be greedy and take both. I knew I had a chance, but I didn't really expect to be sitting here, saying that I have achieved it.

"But I don't think I am going to try to start competing against Andy somehow," added the 24-year-old, who lost the use of his legs at the age of 13 after contracting Transverse Myelitis - a disease affecting the spinal cord. "I saw him earlier on and he just said congrats. He said the Davis Cup team had watched a few of the matches in the locker room before going on to play this weekend."

Claiming a haul like this and making your way to World No 1 is one thing. Keeping yourself there is another. A bit like Novak Djokovic in the able bodied version of the sport, or previous wheelchair tennis luminary Shingo Kuneida of Japan, Reid's next trick is to retain his hunger and demoralise everyone else by relentlessly churning out the biggest titles in the sport, all starting with the end-of-season tour finals in both singles and doubles in California and London. Teenager Hewett is just one the whippersnappers which he may have to fend off.

"It is going to be extremely difficult," said Reid. "There are a lot of top players at the top of our sport just now, young guys as well so it is not going to be easy, but I still feel I am improving. I still feel I am getting better and there are things that I can work on to improve my game.

"Alfie is one of these guys and it is good for me, and good for him, to have each other to battle against," added this product of Helensburgh. "The Rio final was a difficult situation because we were playing together as a team one night then less than 24 hours later we were back on the same court on either side of the net. But it was a great feeling knowing that whatever happened in that match, we had already contributed one gold and a silver, plus the silver from the doubles, to the Paralympics GB table."

There is nothing like timing your run at the right time and Reid's rise to prominence has come just as the wheelchair version of the sport is crossing over into the mainstream. Having hit one million for his Wimbledon singles final on the BBC, viewing figures for the Paralympic tennis on Channel 4 peaked at twice that figure. "It is just amazing to say that so many people watched our sport and hopefully the viewing figures can rise again," he said.

While an invite has already been received to tour his winnings at Ibrox, a date has yet to be thrashed out. Pretty much the only blot on Reid's landscape all summer was the Rangers fan seeing his team go down 5-1 to Celtic in the opening Old Firm match of the season, a day before his opening Paralympic match. "I got up to watch it and it wasn't the best start to the weekend but thankfully it didn't put me off too much."

While he won't get too long to wallow in his glory year, Reid says his next goal is simply to "chill out". He is looking forward to some more time at home this year, including more time playing rough-and-tumble wheelchair basketball with his pals in Paisley.

"I should be home a little bit more next year so I am excited to get a bit more involved in that," he said. "It is great fun and good banter with the guys. They keep me down a peg. A couple of the guys are the same guys I played my first wheelchair tennis with. No matter how well I do, they always remind me how bad my hair used to be back in the day."