‘Something a little less Jewish,’ said my father. ‘David, you see, sounds too Jewish. No musician called David or Moses or Abraham ever met with success. Jewish giants don’t, for some reason, go down too well – even in America. To get you started, we may have to drop the David.’

‘I suspect you have come up with an alternative,’ said Dovidl, who knew that my father never mused on an empty mind.

‘Eli,’ continued Mortimer Simmonds, ‘has a nice nondenominational ring to it. He was, as you know, a Jewish high priest, but the name will appeal to Catholics, reminding them of Christ’s last words in the Easter service “Eli, Eli, lamah sabachtani.” The Methodists will think it’s Welsh, the Anglicans will find it quaint. It also has the advantage of being short, which means I can print it in a larger font, leading the eye to the trisyllabic surname below. What do you think, boys?’

I sometimes wondered whether my father did not judge every issue by how it might look on a billboard. Dovidl, however, did not seem to mind dropping a name. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of erecting a barrier between his private self and his future public persona. ‘That way,’ he said, ‘I’ll know which people know me for what I am and which for what I do.’

That settled, my father sent him out on a confidence-building recital tour around small-town halls, no advance hoardings, no critics invited. Satisfied with his progress after six months, my father took the amiable Neville Cardus to dinner at the Savoy and, over vintage brandys, mentioned to the sybaritic Manchester Guardian music critic that a young prospect of his was playing a Bach recital that weekend at the Colston Hall, Bristol. Cardus, who doubled as the paper’s cricket correspondent, remarked with faint surprise that he had to be in Bristol to cover Gloucestershire versus Lancashire – a fixture my father had verified in advance.

‘It’ll probably rain,’ said my father.

‘Usually does in Bristol,’ agreed Cardus.

‘I’ll leave a pair of tickets at the box-office,’ smiled Mortimer Simmonds, ‘just in case you have an empty evening.’