The man who greets me in Soho is, though it pains me to write this, a pale shadow of his former debonair self: grey-haired, with haunted brown eyes. Smiling sweetly and jittery as anything, Slattery’s speech, slightly breathless, throws up a skittering collection of heart‑stopping anecdotes, abstruse diagnostic details and such tentative expressions of hope for a fresh start to his career it almost brings a tear to your eye.

Now 57, he next month is going to brave the gladiatorial boards in Edinburgh for the first time in 33 years. The challenge? The stage‑version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? the Channel 4 improvisation show that helped make him a comedy kingpin in the Eighties and Nineties. When the call came for him to take part, “I didn’t waver for a moment. I was so excited and surprised. A bit of me thought: ‘Someone must have dropped out. They must be desperate!’ It’s a risk, I know that. What happens if the words don’t come?” He giggles. “I said to myself the other day, in a sense I’m playing the ‘F--- me, I thought he was dead!’ card”.