Chez Patrick is a good five-minute jog-cum-sprint from High Street Kensington Tube station. I know because after three years of trying to persuade the head of Royal Bank of Scotland to have Lunch with the FT, I find myself in the painful position of being so late for my assignation with Stephen Hester that, even with my best athletic efforts, I arrive, panting and sweating, 10 minutes after our appointed time of 12.30pm.

“Don’t worry, he’s not here yet,” says a figure I can barely see in a dazzling burst of rare May sunshine. This, I soon gather, is Patrick Tako, owner of the neighbourhood restaurant and a friend of Hester, who lives around the corner. “I’m not expecting many in today,” he adds as if to explain both his clairvoyance at who I am and the absence of other diners as he ushers me inside.

The restaurant is a charming front-room-of-a-terraced-house affair with a handful of all-French staff chatting amiably in the back. Even after another 10 minutes of chit-chat with the patron, there are no customers out front. It occurs to me that Hester, who made the reservation, might have gone as far as to book the whole place.