The lift doors open and I follow him into the newsroom, half the size of a professional football pitch and filled with so much noise, activity, blinking screens, ashtrays and strewn paper that it makes the FC’s seem like an academic library. As we walk past the picture desk, it is difficult not to notice that pretty much every one of its larger display screens is displaying young, amply endowed topless women.

Wilkinson sees me looking. ‘Better than a mug shot of the Governor of The Bank of England, no?’

‘Doesn’t this stuff bother you?’ I say. ‘It’s 1997, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Too right it’s 1997. Punters don’t want lectures on the Equal Pay Act from prune-faced feminists. They want bouncy girls who know how to have a good time.’

I don’t know if he’s just saying that to wind me up, or if he genuinely believes it. Probably both.

In his glass cubicle, he plonks himself behind his desk. He offers me a plastic swivel chair on casters, which I take, and a fag from a packet of red Marlboros, which I don’t.

‘What can I do you for?’ he says, lighting up.

‘I’m working on a story about the Chancellor.’

‘Course you are.’

‘A little bird tells me he’s been playing away from home.’

‘That’s doesn’t sound like an FC story.’

‘Maybe you’re a bad influence on me. Anyway, that same little bird also told me that you might have chapter and verse on what Kendall does when he’s off the range.’

He folds his hands and leans across the white laminated desk. ‘It’s an interesting idea. But if we had what you call “chapter and verse”, we’d have run the story.’

He hasn’t denied it. ‘Maybe you’ve just got a sniff of it, not the whole thing. Or – just maybe – Kendall knows that you know, and you can just pull his strings, turn him into your nark. That might be more useful to you than publishing and cutting him loose.’

Wilkinson widens his eyes theatrically. ‘My goodness, Peck, you posh broadsheet journalists have evil minds. Are you suggesting that a great British institution like the Globe would engage in common blackmail? Should I be consulting my lawyers?’ Another touch of Carry On.

‘I’m not insinuating anything, darling. I just want to know about the upstanding Tory member.’

‘All in good time. What’s in it for me?’

I got this meeting by suggesting I had a tip for him. Which I do. Kind of.

‘Jackie Elstree. Sixties sex-kitten, now a national treasure.’

Wilkinson cups his hands in front of his chest and makes a heavy lifting gesture.

‘Her latest squeeze is at least thirty years her junior. I assume a kiss-and-tell from him would be a decent property?’

I can see from Wilkinson’s face he’s tempted. ‘Have you got his mobile number?’