The latest issue of Private Eye contains an amusing lookalike comparison between the journalist Rebekah Brooks and Rab C Nesbitt’s Davina, as played by David Tennant. I see it. But I see, too — and have long seen — the similarity in appearance between Rebekah and the ukulele-strumming, falsetto-voiced 1960s showbiz oddball Tiny Tim.

The singer found fame with a performance of On the Good Ship Lollypop on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In, went on to hit the charts with Tiptoe Through the Tulips, and in August 1970 delighted a crowd of 600,000 at the Isle of Wight Festival with a stirring rendition of There’ll Always Be an England. After that, it was sadly downhill all the way. He died in 1996, aged 64.

But it was his personal life that created most press interest. He was famous, for instance, for taking half a dozen or more showers every day. I suppose he suffered from what we would now call obsessive-compulsive disorder. Or was he merely trying to counter the wet, clammy skin suffered by many redheads?

His marriage to a fan, Vicki Budinger, whom he always respectfully called “Miss Vicki”, made headlines around the world. It was this that occupied the bulk of my conversation with him — my first celebrity interview — early in 1970. I wish I’d known then about his early involvement in the career of Bob Dylan at New York’s Cafe Wha? — as recounted by the musical genius in Chronicles Volume One. (When, incidentally, shall we see Volume Two?).

I’d probably have asked him about that instead.