The RFU chair is the only current black chair in British sport.

“Lenny’s a good friend and I think when he says that it’s really about timing,” says Tom. “Right now, and probably for a period of time, it’s helpful to have Black History Month, both for the black community and the wider community, to shine a spotlight on black people’s contribution to British history.

“Perhaps over time, perhaps in my children’s generation, it will be so much part of how we talk about British history it won’t be so important to single it out but it’s not that long ago that we had no Black History Month. I suspect most black people would say we will get to a point where it will be part of British history, but it’s a question of when.”

Maybe it’s also a question of when regarding Tom’s unique status in sport, so how does he feel to be the one and only black leader?

“I’m comfortable with it,” he smiles. “In the course of my career I have constantly found myself in that position in various roles that I have done, so you get used to it. If it’s useful to people to see me in that way and it helps to inspire and engage them, it’s perfectly fine by me. It isn’t a burden.

“In 2017 I was selected as the most influential black person in the UK and I had to decide how that sat with me. It’s just a list but being put at the top of it means you get a level of focus. I could have said please choose someone else, but I thought there’s a reason they have decided it’s going to be me and there will be people who find that helpful in their lives so that’s perfectly fine.”

Tom is also quite comfortable talking about incidences of racism he has encountered in his career.

“When I worked at the internet bank Egg in its early days, I went into a meeting room, and someone had drawn a monkey on the flip chart and written Tom Ilube underneath. I took it away but the Chief Executive of the bank at the time dealt with it in a very powerful way. He sent an email to everyone in the company saying what had happened. He said: ‘I’m not going to try to find out who you are, but I want you to know that your values are not the values of this organisation and I want you to leave because you have no place here.’

“That came from the top and left no room for doubt in anyone’s minds. He was speaking direct to the person who did it in a way the whole organisation would hear, and it was a seismic moment in the organisation. He told me later that he seized on incidents like that to send a message so that everyone was crystal clear where he stood. It’s easy to be an ally when you don’t expose yourself at all and it doesn’t cost you anything but that was a case of ‘I have power in this organisation and people will listen to me when I use my voice and my power’. I didn’t ask for him to do that, but he did it anyway. That is a clear and explicit example of allyship.”

Tom says that in 30 years of his career there have been around 20 or so major incidents of racism to face and 100 or more minor incidents.

“You are quite often faced by incidents where you have to make an instant judgment on what to do. Do you tackle it and risk damaging your career or do you let it pass and feel bad for not standing up to it?

"That drip, drip, drip of relatively trivial minor incidents and occasional larger ones is what you encounter. It has, however, changed a lot for my son and daughter and if I think about my father who came to England in 1957 from Nigeria, straight from Army training there to a military training camp in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, what he experienced would probably have him say to me: ‘I wish I could have had your luck!'

"The order of magnitude of what he experienced has been different for me and will be different for my children. Things are getting better generation by generation. It is frustrating if you want things to move faster and be perfect today, but it will continue to improve in the long term. The direction of travel is better and better, step by step, although it still hurts emotionally in the short term when you are hit by it.”