Sometime between the potato gratin going cold and my guest refusing coffee, the main section of the Commune Social tapas bar in Shanghai falls silent. It is tempting to imagine that the whole city has done the same.

Eric Cantona — the actor and philosophical sketch artist perhaps better known as one the finest and most combustible footballers in history — closes his eyes and starts whistling Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour”.

It is somehow unsurprising. This is exactly why Britain fell in love with Cantona in the 1990s and why his years at Manchester United were the centrepiece of one of the most thrilling epochs in the beautiful game. It takes only moments of meeting the 51-year-old Frenchman to discover that he remains, first and foremost, a performer. On the field, in his pomp, he could electrify tens of thousands of fans every time he made contact with the ball. Off the pitch the performance was even more audacious — a scene-stealing role as the French pseud surrounded by barbaric Brits.