And there is something rather endearing about this, in a pec-yoooooo-liar sort of way.We meet at his big house in Wimbledon. He has just moved in so it's all rather higgledy-piggledy: paintings stacked up against walls, boxes everywhere, mantelpieces crowded with sculptures that have yet to be given a place The telly is up and running, though It's a huge telly He loves telly, he explains "I can watch any crap so long as it's not repeat crap. I particularly like that programme on Saturday evenings." Blind Date? "No. Although I have watched it on occasion and found it rather pleasing." Gladiators? "No That is excr-yoooo-ciatingly boring It's the hospital one." Casualty? "Yes I love it.

But then I can actually be quite vulgar in some directions." No! "Oh yes. I like Branston pickle on vanilla ice- cream." Brian, that is vulgar. "And cheese and marmalade sandwiches," he adds.He is, of course, already not talking to his neighbours. "They have put up barbed wire to keep out the wild foxes, so I've decided to have absol- oooooo-tely nothing to do with them. And they're French." He loves animals in the way people who don't much like other people always do. For many years he lived in Kensington, where he was even known as "The Bardot of Kensington's stray bitches". He moved here because of his two rescue mongrels, Mop and Nusch - "a name I made up because it has a lovely bedr-ooooo- my sound".

He had a stroke in 1994 and, although he's since had a bypass operation and a pacemaker fitted, he is still not up to doing a great deal. "Some days, my blood pressure goes to zero, and I'm just a soggy bag of blood." He could no longer walk his dogs in Kensington Gardens and, as such, needed a house with a very big garden they could romp about in The two dogs seem hideously yappy "Oh, shhhhh," he begs fondly. "Dooooooo shhhhhh."Humans do not seem to interest him greatly He is furiously antisocial He will not go to parties. If he ever gets a Christmas card "then it goes straight intoooo the bin" He is deeply worried about the situation in Kosovo.