Long Sunday lunches in the early Seventies meant the Pontevecchio in Old Brompton Road. Christine Wood and I, Tony Rivers and Ines Troeller, Jenny Harrington, Stephen Sheppard and that month’s rich girl, Nigel Preston and Noni Buchan, Jenny Topper, John S—— aka MTF (Must Touch Flesh) who was twice our age, Duncan Browne, and another markedly less talented musician whom I once unintentionally insulted thus:

‘I just can’t think of a name for this new band we’re getting together’, he worried.

This was the era of Kilburn and The High Roads (prop: Ian Dury) and Hatfield and The North.

‘What,’ I suggested, ‘about Borehamwood – We Bores You Stiff.’

He turned white with rage. Artists. So sensitive. He became a one-hit wonder – but what a hit, he made a fortune.

On another occasion an American academic at the next table told us that he had just returned from Mexico City, alive. What had most impressed him was the name of a brand of rat poison – The Last Supper.

Dessert was always: