He saw a Vincent Black Shadow not long ago – “just breath-taking”. Motorbikes are a passion. He’s got a Yamaha in London and the Triumph in LA, which he rides “with a weird chauvinistic pride… I was watching Biker Build-Off and there was this Japanese custom bike designer called Shinya Kimura. You could tell within seconds he was a genius.” Laurie thought about buying one of Kimura’s bikes. “It was $26,000. I thought, ‘I can’t possibly justify that’, and then I thought, ‘Well, why am I doing this job?’” Did he buy it? “No. Something in me says you shouldn’t have toys.”

He has, however, bought a ping pong table. “That’s a real luxury.” Is he better than his children? “Er… I’m not bad actually,” he admits shyly. I say I thought he was supposed to be Mr Self-Deprecation. “Yes, I spoke to my shrink yesterday on the phone in LA – you have to have one before they let you in – and I mentioned I was doing this [interview]. I said, ‘I can’t bear going through the same f****** dance of despair. I’m just going to say what I feel.’ And he encouraged that. So yes, I’m quite good at ping pong.” But is he better than his children? “Er… that’s a parenting issue. If I announce publicly… Er… I’d better skip over that one.” His children, he says, are “an unending delight”.