Like millions of other British music fans of his generation, Richard Curtis listened to pirate radio stations in the Sixties surreptitiously. “I have a clear memory of being in my bunk bed at night with my transistor radio under the pillow,” he says. “It was on very quietly, so my parents didn’t hear it. There was a tremendous compromise: how far did you turn the volume up, and how hard did you press the radio against your ear?”

By his own admission, Curtis has been obsessed with pop music from an early age. He loved the seven-inch singles that teenage babysitters brought to his house when his family lived in Sweden: “The Four Tops, the Supremes, Simon and Garfunkel,” he reminisces dreamily. “And Swedish groups like the Hep Stars and the Hootenanny Singers.” Later, at boarding school, he would miss chapel on Sunday evenings and hide in the music rehearsal room – so he could listen to Pick of the Pops on the radio.