This promises to be a lot less exciting than the last time I interviewed Terry Smith. Nearly 10 years ago he took me on a white-knuckle flight over London in one of his helicopters pointing out the sights including his Georgian mansion in Essex from 2,000 feet.

This time it starts in the waiting room of his London office, round the back of John Lewis. Dominating the small space is a glass cabinet crammed with tubes of toothpaste, jars of jam and cans of fizzy drinks, as if recreating the look of a Bulgarian corner shop in the 1970s. It could scarcely be more pedestrian.