Seven years ago Brian Masters published Getting Personal, in which he told the arresting story of his progress from a working-class childhood to teenage years as protégé of the self-styled ‘tele-notoriety’ (now largely forgotten) Gilbert Harding, and then ever upwards to an empyrean of intimacy with such aristocratic families as the Londonderrys, the Devonshires and the Richmonds. This book is its sequel.

To have remade himself as someone who might well be mistaken for the scion of a noble house required not merely intelligence, determination and charm but also what the tolerant might well call cheek and the censorious effrontery. To his credit, Masters is entirely frank about this aspect