“I just don’t want to talk about history. All that shit! You can find all this in other interviews I’ve done. I’ve been 40 years talking about other people I’ve worked with. No, sorry. I’m just not interested.”

Doesn’t he think the idea that the interview should be entirely about the present and what he may do in the future is a bit unreasonable?

“But you can do research,” he says. And calm, measured Eno has turned into irascible Eno. “That’s your job! Research! You can look through thousands of interviews I’ve done where I’ve talked about all of this. That’s your job! You get paid for it. I don’t get paid for this, by the way!”

I get paid to ask people questions, I say.

“OK, well, you’ve asked me and I’ve said I don’t want to answer them. That’s a fair deal, isn’t it? I know what you were after,” he says, “and I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to go into a historical gloss on my career because that is not where my thoughts are right now. I’m thinking about something as we’re talking that we’re not talking about and I don’t want to lose it.”

Brian Eno: ‘We’ve been in decline for 40 years – Trump is a chance to rethink’. I’m 100% on Eno’s side here.