It's one of many anecdotes that appear in his just-published book Looking Back At Me, which started as a collection of photos but has become much more as the musician – who's enjoying a new lease of life as Ilyn Payne in the TV series Game of Thrones – shared his memories with co-author Zoe Howe.

Johnson says: "I had got quite rich because of songwriting. Before we'd done the last album I had gone to the publishers at United Artists and said to them, 'I've made a fair bit of bread from these songs, and I'd never have written them if it hadn't been for the others, and I think they should share it. Can you write up some kind of contract where we share out the publishing money for this album?'