Steven Patrick Morrissey, president of the New York Dolls’ UK fan club as a teenager in 1970s Manchester, knows the importance of image. That’s why his backing band wore matching denim outfits while the singer, the leader of the gang, dressed in dark shirt and trousers. It’s also why portraits of the young Richard Burton, glass in hand, gazed out moodily from the backdrop – the latest addition to Morrissey’s iconography of white working-class outsiders.

In one sense, it was business as usual. Morrissey’s signature motifs of sexual ambiguity and narcissistic self-pity have barely changed since the early days of The Smiths 26 years ago. Even at 48, he inhabits a fantasy world as powerful as any teenager’s.