Winking has always been my favourite form of non-verbal communication. It’s the versatility of the act that I appreciate, giving it the edge over the disapproving finger wag or (my close runner-up) the double thumbs-up.

I like the way a wink can be offered as a friendly overture to a small child, wielded as a silent gesture of solidarity to an under-fire colleague, or used as a last-ditch measure to show that a misconstrued remark was not, in fact, “violently offensive”, but just a poor attempt at a joke. Admittedly, I don’t tend to employ the wink in a flirtatious manner so much these days, but that’s more because, at a certain age, it’s more alarming than seductive.