His guest appearance at last month’s excellent Revolution ProWresting show in London was met with wild adulation.

The multiple world champ-ion is candid about the reason he makes the trip to England: he doesn’t need to come and see the best fans in the world, he wants to.

Sitting in London’s York Hall venue seemed a fitting setting to have a chinwag.

Hitman claims England holds a special place in his heart, saying: “There’s a certain sense, a genuine love and affection that’s not pretend.

“They’d meet us at the sports and sleep in the lobby of hotels waiting for us. I’ll never forget those days, but those days are kinda gone.

“When I came back for WWE a couple of years ago, travelling around, it’s not the same. The hotels aren’t filled with fans, the fans are sort of a distant thing now.”

A sense that fans are more divorced from the product at the top end of the scale would be fair. Over the passage of time in our global multi- media consumer society of instant gratification it might well be a natural process in one sense. Fans can sit on their sofa in front of a phone or a laptop and tweet.

However, Bret contends that the process might just be reciprocal – some of today’s top talent don’t take the time to look after the people who pay their way, he says. “It’s changed a lot. I don’t think the wrestlers take the time. A lot of the times when I’ve been around, the wrestlers don’t have the time of day for the fans.

“They are too busy getting to their room, or an autograph is a big chore, or stopping and taking pictures.

“I don’t think a lot of them appreciate that. A lot of them haven’t been humbled that way.”

Why then did the British audiences take to him so fondly? It seems more a case of setting world-class standards in and out of the ring, and never forgetting his roots in Stampede Wrestling, building a business back up from nothing, that has served this legend so well.