If Rich notices the deflection tactic, he doesn't say anything about it.

(He doesn't notice. But Jim does.)

"All my life," he says. "I mean, literally, I was the baby Jesus in the nativity play. Mum insists to this day that I was the first one in years who didn't start screaming at the worst possible moment, but I think mums have to say things like that."

And if that sounds like an anecdote he's told a few hundred times - that's because it is. It's exactly the kind of pithy little story people like, and it does happen to be true.