Now 85, she is still highly active and is the executive producer of Sherlock, which is produced by her daughter Sue, and was conceived by her son-in-law Steven Moffat.

As an agent, she looked after some of British comedy’s biggest names. As well as Milligan, she represented Tony Hancock and Frankie Howerd – both of them difficult, emotionally fragile characters who must, I imagine, have proved challenging on a daily basis. Did she feel like their therapist?

“No, that’s far too grand a term for it,” she says. “They were great fun to be with. I loved them really.”

Nevertheless, the relationship with Hancock proved difficult. He was an alcoholic, among other things, and she recalls him going round to her house to dinner, “downing a bottle of either vodka or whisky” and then leaving. On another occasion she was summoned, along with writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, to Hancock’s flat.

“We thought we were going to talk about the film the boys were writing for him, and we sat down and he said: ‘I don’t want you to write for me any more.’ And then he turned to me and said: ‘I don’t think you can be my agent, either.’ So the three of us went downstairs, where there was a great big swimming pool, dark and echoey, and we had a pot of tea for three. I tried very hard not to cry because I wasn’t just losing a client, I was losing a very good friend.

“Then, years later, I was driving and I heard [on the radio] that he had committed suicide in Australia. And I thought: ‘How sad. You went all that way and you had no one with you.’ ”