Lyndham Gregory should also be heaped with praise for his vocal acrobatics. He has no easy task, so diverse is the cast of characters. The ship’s pilot, Mr Doughty (‘Just eat the bish, you gudda. He was only foozlowing.’), is surely a pre-incarnation of the legendary father of gobbledegook, Sir Stanley Unwin. Quite remarkibold. Gregory deftly breathes life into the miscreants and guiltless aboard this tightly packed tub. I particularly liked the second mate, Zachary Smith, a handsome Yankee — he is officially black, the son of a Maryland freedwoman but with ‘skin the colour of old ivory’. Zachary’s voice sounds uncannily like Bill Clinton’s; thankfully his female admirer, Paulette, bears no vocal similarity to Hillary. The blurb informs us that Lyndham Gregory was ‘Ashok in The Archers’. Only aficionados with elephantine memories will remember Ashok — and I’ve asked several — but it does qualify Gregory to perform some splendidly varied voices for an assortment of Indian characters.

Sea of Poppies is the first of a trilogy;so the fun has only just begun. As Sir Stanley would say, ‘thriftymost on your banky balancer’ — excellent value at £14.99.

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