One word still echoes from my childhood: “impeccable”. To anyone taught by Mr Hannigan, it meant everything. Before we went out of school to play games, visit a museum or go to a theatre, we would line up in the playground and he would ask one of us how our behaviour would be. There was only one correct answer: “Impeccable, sir!”

Mr Hannigan, our head teacher at Westminster Cathedral Choir School in the early 1980s, very much set the tone. His buckled shoes were always immaculate, with that shine I have since learnt requires hours to embed and moments to dull, and he was always dressed just a half-generation older than most of the adults I knew.