He remembers, even, when teabags were first invented and his aunt gave him a box for Christmas along with a pair of scissors because “she thought you had to snip open the bags to pour the tea into the pot” He is teetotal, and has never drunk alcohol “I just don’t need the stimulation. Although I’ve had liqueur chocolates, which are very tasty.” I wonder if he has ever been seduced by any serious, material blandishments “I can’t say I want to be judged by what I own My car is just a set of wheels It’s not being goody -goody It’s just in my nature I’m just not interested. Although I am a sucker for gadgets, as you must realise.”I do He has a mania for gadgets, even, and always has done. Indeed, in 1963 he was among the first to acquire a telephone answering- machine. Today, as far as I can see, he owns computers galore, a video camera, a digital tape- recorder thing, a pager, which bleeps at one point (“Who can that be? It’s not Millbank Tower, of that I can be sure.”), and his latest purchase, some software called “Dragon Naturally Speaking”, which apparently allows him to dictate straight on to a computer, although the programme had to be trained to recognise his voice first. “The first time I did it, I had a test sentence and said: ‘This machine can type 10 times as fast as a top typist can type’. But it came out as: ‘This magazine can fight 10 times as fast as a top Baptist can write’ Still, it’s not bad Not bad at all.”He is an irrepressible optimist He lets me have a go “Talking of Baptists,” I dictate.

“The driver of the black cab that brought me here says he once took Mr Benn to the Bloomsbury Baptist Church, where he was given a 5p tip.”"What?” cries Mr Benn “Are you sure? Only 5p?” He looks utterly upset I feel ashamed of myself. Perhaps, I say, it happened years and years ago, when a family of four could live on 5p for a fortnight and still have enough left to put a down payment on a Ford Zephyr He still looks awfully crestfallen I try to cheer him up This house must be worth a bomb now, I say. How much did you pay for it? “I paid £4,500 in 1952.” And now it’s worth what? Millions? “I really don’t know.”Does he, unlike the rest of us, truly not keep track of these things? Or is he affecting not to know? This is what worries people about Mr Benn, I know. Is he absolutely for real, or not? I would dare to say he is but, then, what does that make him? Total hero or total crackpot? I’m not sure I’m not even sure it matters any more He just is.

Has always been.I ask him if his faith in socialism has ever been shaken He says not “If anything,” he replies, “it has deepened. I’ve moved more to the left as I’ve got older.”"But,” I ask, “can you name a country where socialism has actually worked? Has spread more happiness than unhappiness?”"It isn’t a country, but the NHS is the most socialist thing we ever did And phenomenal. I know it’s hammered all the time, but to regard health as a national interest and not something left to the market was fantastic.”"Yes, but the NHS is not a country…”"Are you a socialist?”"In theory, maybe. But ultimately, someone achieves more power than someone else and that power always seems to corrupt.”"I think it’s true that all power corrupts, but whether the power is the same as the idea, I’m not sure.”"The Poles say socialism is the longest and most painful of the roads to capitalism.”"Well, I would say that capitalism is the longest and most painful of roads to socialism.”You could argue with him for ever like this, and get absolutely bloody nowhere. His idealism is so great, he can club you to the point of exhaustion with the resulting rhetoric. When I interrupt one of his long monologues on the importance of democracy and “people having a say in their future”, which “the people in power don’t want”, and put it to him that most people are more interested in their own particular lives than the common good, he gets rather high-handed and cross “That is the bad side in people, the selfish side. You have to be very careful about being cynical about other people, otherwise you get such a low opinion of them.

You have to believe there is good in everybody, I think.”How, then, do you account for Nazism, say? “You have to understand why that happened. There were six million unemployed, and when you have six million unemployed anyone who wants to get into power has to find a scapegoat, and in this instance it was the Jews It was an evil doctrine No mistake about that. But the idea developed because of the circumstances, so you have to deal with the circumstances.” Still, didn’t it prove that evil is as much a part of human nature as decency? “That’s the original-sin theory, which I find very frightening. A theologian once said to me: ‘Man’s capacity for evil makes democracy necessary, and man’s capacity for good makes it possible.’ I find that a tremendously interesting idea.”Like most immovable socialists, perhaps, Mr Benn never lets the evidence get in the way of an interesting idea.Has he always thought like this? Yes, he says It was the way that he was brought up. His mother was among the first to campaign for the ordination of women. His father, William, was a Labour MP who later became Viscount Stansgate.