The seduction of the Smiths spread into contemporary culture as well. Liverpool playwright Willy Russell wrote his play The Wrong Boy based on a teenager who is obsessed with the Smiths. And Douglas Coupland’s book Girlfriend in a Coma was based on a Smiths song. It is the pleasure derived from the microscopic detail of Morrissey’s songs, combined with an utterly individual sound, which is so powerful.

He has succeeded in balancing sadness with humour, self-absorption with social commentary and deep sensitivity with disturbing violence. And his songs of alienation and isolation have appeared to translate lock, stock and barrel from the streets of Manchester to LA, something that he himself has expressed surprise about. It took some years for Morrissey to be elevated to the status of national treasure. But today his comeback has developed a momentum entirely of its own.

Nothing can stop it: not an underwhelming new album, nor a clutch of mixed reviews. And he has found new communities of fans across the world including in Latin America. Having spent the last decade regarding any artist who has intellectual pretensions with deep suspicion, the British public has decided it likes its rock brainy again.