Philip Broadley was not at his most forthcoming on the avoidance issues behind the total tax contribution framework unveiled this week.

Here are the numbers, Philip said, make of them what you will. He really didn’t want to draw too many conclusions from them.

At one stage, when discussing whether or not the figures would lead to calls for wider-ranging accounting standards on tax, he went so far as to make a comic allusion.

‘As Ronnie Barker said: “I know my place”.’ So, he won’t be saying what he thinks. TS believes it was Ronnie Corbett, actually, but we won’t quibble.

If it wasn’t his place to comment on that, though, surely he could say whether or not the Pru would be following the total tax contribution idea in its accounts. Sadly, despite being the group’s FD, he didn’t want to talk about that either.

Was Philip entirely keen on the research, we wondered? It was, after all, his predecessor Jon Symonds’ idea.