Brian Sewell has reached a far wider and, very likely, much more appreciative audience in nearly 30 years as the Evening Standard’s art critic than he would have gained had his activities in the art world remained limited to academia and auctions. Clearly, his journalism also contributed to his translation into a television ‘personality’, though there was another powerful reason for this as we shall see.

But in spite of all he owes to journalism in terms of fame and, presumably, income he remains as sniffy about it as he is about most other things. Alleging that interest in each of his articles lasts less than the 24 hours of its publication date, he asks: “Was there ever a more futile vehicle for perception, scholarship and sensibility?”

Still he goes on at it, though, at the age of 81. And who can blame him? He is very good at what he does, popular with readers for his wit and erudition, and unsackable. In a misjudged move, 35 of his enemies (artists, gallery owners, shamefully at least one other journalist) ensured this by signing a letter ten years into his stint demanding his dismissal.

That homophobia figured among the charges they laid against him will amaze readers of this book and its predecessor (now out in paperback from Quartet at £12). His own indefatigable pursuit of gay sex, on the streets of London, in the bathhouses of New York and in the docks of Amsterdam, among other places, is luridly described and makes such an accusation laughable.

His former Courtauld Institute mentor Prof Anthony Blunt, though himself gay, was not one of his lovers, he insists, although he was widely suspected of being so when the “fourth man” spy scandal erupted in 1979. Sewell emerged at this time in the role of the much-quoted ‘friend’ of the disgraced art expert, with his broadcast comments causing amazement and amusement through the precious, fruity tone of their delivery. A media star was born!

Naturally, Outsider II has much to say about Blunt, some of it serious some of it not. There is a delightful illustration of his unworldliness in a remark he made after noticing a McDonald’s on a visit to Germany: “How strange to find a Scottish restaurant in Düsseldorf.”

That Sewell knows what makes us laugh is evident in all his writing.

Curmudgeon he may be, but he is a practised comedian too.