‘I suppose the show could be called an extravaganza. With hindsight, it was of considerable curiosity value,’ Payne said. ‘Jolly old-fashioned, even then. I mean, it took place between the swinging ’60s and the raucous ‘70s. It was a rather self-conscious throwback to a previous age – la belle epoque, no less. The Beatles or the Rolling Stones might not have existed – or for that matter Johnny Halliday. 1968 Paris might never have happened.’

‘After the concert we went to see Corinne in her dressing room,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘It was filled with flowers, remember, Hughie? Some of the bouquets were as tall as Corinne!’

Payne nodded. ‘There was a highly charismatic friendly giant sitting there with her, smoking a big black cigar. He gave us champagne. He couldn’t have been anything but American. That was the great Mr Lark.’

‘It was Mr Lark who groomed Corinne for stardom,’ Lady Grylls explained. ‘The urchin hairstyle by Elrhodes, which became her trademark, was his idea – the tricolour dresses too. He organized all Corinne’s domestic and foreign tours and, generally, took charge of her life.’

‘Corinne drank nothing but camomile tea sweetened with honey. She was eating caramelized almonds out of a cellophane bag,’ Major Payne went on. ‘She ate like a little bird…’

‘I think you must have fancied her,’ Antonia said.

‘She was wearing a high-collared blue dress with white cuffs and a red bow at the throat. She was bourgeois respectability and wholesomeness personified. She was perfectly polite, in a monosyllabic kind of way. Extremely shy. She kept leafing through a book called The Language of Flowers. No coquettish toss of the fringe, no calling eye, no provocative laugh. In fact there was more than a whiff of the convent girl about her. I keep telling you, my love – not my type.’