It forms the backdrop in Truman Capote’s yarn about spending an afternoon with Marilyn Monroe, inspired Billy Wilder’s movie, The Lost Weekend, and features in Mad Men, the brilliant US TV drama series. Rock and Roll sensation Buddy Holly proposed marriage there on a first date and Detective Popeye Doyle (played by Gene Hackman) asked for a “nice, juicy PJ Clarke’s hamburger” in the movie The French Connection.

So, PJ Clarke’s, a 140-year-old saloon on the corner of Third Avenue and 55th Street in midtown Manhattan, seemed like a good locale, in a counter-intuitive kind of way, to savour the atmosphere as former US president Donald Trump fronted the Manhattan Criminal Court.