His eyes still had that white, starey look.

He bears a disarming resemblance to the infamous prisoner Charles Bronson – shaved head, beard, sweat pouring off him, muscular, starey eyes.

“Oh, it’s one of those St John of Jerusalem, Knights Templar things,” he said airily, starey eyes a-staring.

Dressed in a leather coat, his hair cropped, this northerner (“Lots of planets have a north!”) was, in Richard Ingrams’s indelible phrase, the scary, starey type you’d take care to move away from in a café.