carpet

"I've looked miserable for all these years because when we stand on the red carpet, this guy has always gone on the left," she says, gesturing at Sir David.

"It's not a fight movie, it's a life movie," he said at the red carpet premiere last month.

Next door, in the exhibition centre, there are swathes of empty blue carpet.

"Starvation was the worst thing… you eat the crumbs on the carpet," he says.

His children now do the same but the floor has been carpeted, so is less perilous.