WHEN GINGER MET HERMAN

Ginger Baker stands framed in the doorway, as if facing down a hostile saloon. But it’s only bar staff and Classic Rock who await him in this Brighton pub on a slow Friday morning. And any menace quickly evaporates when, seconds later, his left leg gives way, and he’s grabbed before he hits the floor.

Director Jay Bulger’s Beware Of Mr. Baker was the 2012 documentary which revived his terrible legend for a new generation, who watched agog as he ploughed cars off cliffs, assaulted bandmates and the film’s director, and stepped away unrepentant and unscathed. Interviewing Baker that year at his home outside Canterbury, I still found plenty to beware of. Questions were met with a barked “What?”, and had to be attempted as if under fire, braced in the gale of negativity Ginger generated.

Returning there for in 2014, though, I realised that two reasons he kept hollering at me were because he was deaf, and in pain. Another is that he relishes being rude.