It’s a relief therefore to discover that, although Welsh may have mellowed in middle age ("The older you get, the less physically and mentally robust you become") and given up the wild partying of his youth ("You get to a point where it’s not fun anymore"), he has retained a wicked sense of humour. "I’m in Miami," he explains down the phone from the East-coast house he now considers his home. "It got a bit colder today actually. It went down to about 60 degrees but it’s back up into the 80s again over the next couple of days, so I’m manning up and hanging on in there." It's easy to picture a playful grin spreading across the face of this proud Scotsman, who undoubtedly knows all about the storms that have battered England into damp submission over the past few weeks.