Since the interviews are straightforward, one-on-one conversations, Bailey and whoever he is talking to naturally address each other as “you”. As I am saying hello, my eye catches a huge black-and-white print of an enormous black penis. So here I am, in Bailey’s not-quite- Clerkenwell-but-nearly studio (he lives round the corner in a converted factory in King’s Cross). This goes on for about 10 minutes, and strikes one as an oddly – not to mention transparently – insecure little ploy.Anyway, the films are very good. “Bailey’s great.” “Bailey – now he’s fabulous.” Bailey, understandably, says nothing directly to camera, but you know he’s there, being all quiet, which make the solemn paeans of (well deserved) praise faintly comical. Except that is, in the third programme, when most of the models interviewed speak (unprompted, no doubt) about the joys of “working with Bailey” “I love working with Bailey,” they say to Bailey.

There has, in the past year, been an abundance of TV programmes on the subject, and I can’t say any of them gripped me very much. Sex, drugs, bile, bitchery, tantrums, growing old – the films tell it like it is in minute, visceral detail.They also tell us a little bit about Bailey. The result is extraordinarily revealing, both of the modelling industry (enough vile, reptilian men to make your hair curl) and of the models and photographers themselves. Bailey has a weirdly successful interviewing style, consisting of not saying much and giggling a lot, which has the effect of making people blurt. So it was with a heavy heart and a great urge to nap that I sat down and watched his. To my surprise, I was gripped, and my initial plan (watch one and pretend to have seen the rest) went awry.

Apart from the fact that the Bailey had unprecedented access to everyone in fashion, darling, one time supermodels actually talk, at length. It’s, you know, really cool and everything, and I’m sure Bailey has done some thrillingly shocking things in his time, but, well, here we are in 1998 … Perhaps Bailey (never “David” – annoyingly, I chickened out of telling him to call me “Knight”) thought this too, because a year ago he jumped at the chance when Channel 4 approached him to make a series about modelling. He also paints – large canvases featuring lumpen little creatures in ointmenty colours.