Normally, pitching up at the side entrance of the Ritz in a car manifestly not from a car showroom likely to be frequented by a Ritz guest will result in you being gently moved on. Yet somehow, despite the fact that I was driving a small, humble-looking and bilious yellow battery-powered vehicle, I was allowed to remain.

Maybe the doorman’s well-developed sixth sense told him the car was something special and classless – like the original Mini of the 1960s – or maybe he saw the photographers snapping away at it. Whatever the reason, he waved me and my Th!nk car benevolently into one of London’s more exclusive parking slots, six inches from the backside of the hotel’s very own Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine.