“I take it you want the room without the children in, sir?” says the concierge before I am led up to meet Geoffrey Boycott for this month’s Wisden Cricket Monthly interview. Boycott has granted us an interview to coincide with his latest touring show, Ashes to Ashes, in cahoots with long-time sparring partner Jonathan Agnew.

Upon arrival in the room, a hotel lounge occupied by several hushed business meetings, I find a seat and wait for him. When he walks through the same door five minutes later, in breezy and cheery fashion, he has his own cushion with him, which he carefully lays on the seat adjacent to me. He takes out of his pocket a number of different vitamin-form medication, which he arranges into an exactly symmetrical line on the table in front of us and re-positions my phone, there to record the interview, closer to him.

The interview tends to occasionally take on the genuinely bizarre format of me asking him questions and him answering different ones, so much so that I begin to check that he isn’t answering the question before and that I haven’t unwittingly entered a Two Ronnies sketch mid-conversation. He is, for almost the entire duration of our hour-long conversation, unnervingly and gloriously the Geoffrey Boycott you assume can’t actually be real.

Are you aware that when people meet you, that in their eyes you are slightly larger than life?

Am I?!

I went on Test Match Special a while ago as a guest. I remember saying to them, ‘I love listening to Geoffrey because I know he’s going to tell it like it is and it’s going to be entertaining’, and just as I said it, you tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned around… You were so Geoffrey Boycott, Geoffrey Boycott x100, that it was almost a bit disarming. Do you notice that people react in funny ways to meeting you?

Some people are nervous, I don’t know why. My daughter thinks I’m a pussycat. Look, when I first started commentating I only had a grammar school education. I thought, what the hell, you’ve got to be yourself because you can’t keep up a pretence forever. And then you have to cross your fingers, cross your toes as well and hope that people like it. You can’t make them like you. You do your best, find your style, then it’s a question of hope. What was it that President said? You can’t please all the people all the time. I can’t remember who the President was, but the guy that wrote it was the genius wasn’t he? He’s the clever guy that got it right.

So you’re aware you’re being yourself and by turn, you must be aware that you polarise opinion too?

[Sighs] Yes. It’s sad that. Because I don’t mean to. I care so much about the game. I love it, I’m passionate about it. I don’t have to do it for the money. I’m at a stage of my life where I don’t need to, but I like it. I’m delighted every day to go to the cricket. I mean, the first thing I did in the morning when I was playing wasn’t making a cup of tea, it was opening the curtains [mimics slowly opening some curtains, then rubs his hands]. I might be batting today, lovely…

I haven’t heard anyone suggest that yet.

No f***er says anything, they don’t ask people like me. We’re persona non grata. They think because we played for England we must say nice things. When it goes badly we don’t enjoy it, but I cannot say good things about bad cricket, or else my profession and integrity is gone. I can’t. I’m not there to be anyone’s cheerleader. I’m there to be honest, fair, to tell the truth, and be professional and I’m proud of that. l have to go finish my packing.

And with that, Geoffrey Boycott is gone, to Aylesbury for his show with Aggers.