Roy Kerridge had already perfected a line in secondhand clothing when I first met him 40 years ago – a short sheepskin coat, a brown Dunn’s suit, a pastel shirt. He had no almost money, because he was determined to live as a writer but was seldom published.

I had sought him out because I was impressed by his reportage in magazines like New Society and The Spectator. There was an ironical depth to his photographic observation, naive though it seemed on the surface.

I found him in a freezing B&B on the Welsh Marches. After our frugal tea, just as the distant radiation from one bar of an electric fire began to be discernible, the landlady clicked it off, remarking: “There’s nice and warm now.”