“In a china cup please, not a cardboard one because then everything just tastes of paper, doesn’t it? Very dark with literally just one or two drops of cold milk, almost black but just not quite, and I shan’t have anything to eat, thank you, I don’t wish to be spitting food over my interlocutor.”

Henry Blofeld manages to make even asking for coffee a lyrical, conspiratorial treat. The cup appears, Blofeld is enthusiastic, suggesting its maker “ought to open a coffee stand. Or be given a medal”.

By way of explaining her facility with Blofeld’s precise stipulations, the woman notes that her husband takes his coffee the same way. “Oh well,” says Blofeld. “Then you’ve already had a net this morning, haven’t you?”

With Blofeld, commentating on his last match for Test Match Special this week, laughter is a constant, and everything comes wrapped in a cricketing metaphor. Curious, I suggest, that Blofeld’s life’s work has been for jollity, while his brother was a High Court Judge.

“Oh yes, he’s much cleverer than me, and much shrewder,” he says. “My reaction to life is to take two paces down the wicket, John’s trigger movement is to go on to the back foot and look and wait.”