Those Brit critics, recalling Laurie's days of the slightly undignified do-what-you-have-to-to-get-ahead routine of a young British actor on the way up are past him, like to imply that his new life — what some of them have called his “reinvention” — as an American star has only come about because of his days in the Brit-com boot camp of the 1980s and '90s.

‘I'd try and grapple with him myself, only I've got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs wherever he finds them.’

It was desperately close until all but the closing moments, and for that we had the 32nd-ranked [Julien] Benneteau to thank for bringing the fight out in [Roger] Federer, whose thirst for these long battles has waned over the past couple of years. For a player regarded by many as the greatest of all time his record in completed five-setters is ordinary: now 20 wins, 16 losses.

By the afternoon it seemed as if the storm had passed and that frost was setting in; but in the evening the wind rose to gale force, bringing telegraph poles down like skittles and tangling power and telephone lines.