With the muscle memory of the talk-show host still strong, Clive James holds out an introductory arm and ushers me into the library of his Docklands flat. He delivers an opening spiel that sounds almost as if it has been said many times before: “This is my bachelor pad, but Cambridge is where the books really are,” he says all the while pointing to a selection of many books in six languages – including Russian and Japanese – that he’s managed to acquire since leaving Sydney in the early 1960s.

At 68, James has finally reached the age that he has looked for the past 20 years. He’s still heavy-set and paunchy but gone are the tight television suits that he used to be funnelled into like an overgrown schoolboy, or Alexei Sayle. These days, with his dark-rimmed specs and existentialist uniform of black shirt and trousers, he could pass for a professor of English literature.