Britain needs to think long and hard about a no-deal Brexit, he contends, because this will adversely affect London as an international city. A cheaper pound won’t of itself compensate for loss of access to European markets in his view. To continue attracting the international talent and investment it currently enjoys, he says, Britain will have to move to a lower tax regime, yet he senses little appetite for this in Westminster, where there are some “very scary” ideas about what to do with tax rates.

HBJ needs no prompting in talking about Saudi Arabia, and he doesn’t pull his punches in condemning its actions. This will be the third year running that Qatari citizens have been denied access to the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. “Even the Iranians are allowed to go”, he exclaims resentfully.

“This wound runs deep, and it [the blockade] is hurting on both sides. There are families that have been split between the two countries, there are brothers who cannot not see each other, mothers who cannot see sons, and sons who cannot see fathers”.

HBJ then quickly moves on to accuse Saudi Arabia of routinely attempting to undermine the kingdom’s preparations for hosting the World Cup in 2022 with false allegations. He finds Saudi’s campaign hard to understand as in his view the World Cup is an event the whole region can be proud of.

He also accuses the Saudis, with their ambivalent attitude to the early Coalition against the Syrian regime, of being complicit in the catastrophe of the Syrian civil war and its accompanying refugee crisis.

The region desperately needs a normal relationship between the six countries of the so-called Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates - HBJ insists, but thanks to Saudi, they are in no mood for such alliances. This he attributes partly to Saudi jealousy of Qatar’s oil and gas wealth, and the uses it has been put to in expanding into a range of different industries, including the media, through Al Jazeera.

“They falsely accuse us of terrorism and so on. There is no international organisation that publicly supports these claims. The United States did not accuse Qatar, or any European body, or any other bodies, it's just Saudi and the Emirates, and they do that because they know that in America and Europe when they talk about terrorism, everybody wants to listen, because for the West, the war on terror is a priority.