Three separate and distinct Jehovah’s Witnesses who told me that Armageddon was scheduled for 1975 and that there would be no place for me among the 50,000 survivors unless I did something about the state of my soul pretty smartly. I didn’t try to explain that the thought of surviving in a world populated only by Witnesses horrified me: I just gave them each a telephone number of one boring friend or another who would, I assured them, relish a visit from one of their sect.

Two respectable acquaintances who each had found that they had invited us to dinner on the wrong day and would ring us back in due course.

Three ditto who had accepted invitations from us but now found they had previous – or more likely subsequent – engagements.

One engaging re-incarnation buff who had been the Great Beast of Revelation the last time around.

One quite frantic chap who said I had got it all wrong about the Devil: ‘She’s a coloured person,’ he explained.

Several alleged and assorted witches, some of whom sneered and some of whom offered alibis.

One drunken Irishman who asked for precise directions to my house so that he could call and bash my bloody brains in.

One chap called Smith who said that he was going to church to pray for my soul but with no very lively expectation of success.

One prominent member of the Pressure Group for the Reform of the Cruelty to Animals Law, who proposed to take the poodle away from me and find it a good home. (I told her that I, too, was keen on cruelty to animals but that the poodle was a stuffed one, alas, having died last year in a nameless fashion.)