“Even my nieces call me Uncle Arthur, it’s crazy,” he says. He has even turned up to work on building sites in his outfits, while also doing turns as a lookalike.

He has the haircut and a dozen baker boy caps, albeit without the razor blades that, the myth goes (it’s not true), a real Birmingham gang of the same name used to weaponise their headgear. He started as a fan of the show – and of Arthur – but was soon throwing out most of his modern clothes and picking up 1920s suits in vintage shops. “Most days I’m dressed as Arthur,” Milligan says, returning to his Kent accent.

If the cap fits … Shane Milligan dressed up as Arthur Shelby from Peaky Blinders. There are screams and slow-motion sequences as the gang terrorise rich people in dinner jackets.

His trademark Peaky haircut – shaved back and sides, mop on top – is just so. Arthur wears his sharpest tweed three-piece suit and tailored coat, his violent rage only slightly dislodging his tie from its penny collar. The scene, set in 1921 and written by the show’s creator Steven Knight, is classic Peaky. In the episode, Arthur Shelby (played by Paul Anderson), the tortured brother of crime boss Tommy (Cillian Murphy), has just violently taken over a London jazz club owned by Italian capo Darby Sabini. The line comes early on in Peaky Blinders, the Birmingham-set gangster drama that is about to come to a presumably bloody conclusion in its sixth series on BBC One and Netflix. “By order of the Peaky Blinders, this place is under new management!” he bellows in guttural Brummie from his home in Gravesend. When Shane Milligan picks up the phone, the plasterer and part-time magician from Kent launches straight into an impression of a character he feels he embodies so fully that he sometimes loses sight of himself.

Peaky blinder flat cap