It was producer Elisabeth Robinson - who, as president of production at The Ladd Company, oversaw the development and production of such films as Braveheart - who first brought the novel to Schepisi’s attention. Robinson thought (rightly, as it turns out) that he might be interested in scripting as well as directing.

“She said I should read it because I would probably love it,” he says, “and that it would appear to be difficult to make into a film and I’d probably like that challenge too!”

Jack’s widow, Amy (Helen Mirren, above), has her reasons for not coming along.

“In the book,” continues Schepisi, “the chapters are done from various people’s points of view. There’s a chapter for Jack, a chapter for Amy, a chapter for Ray and, when you’re in that chapter, it’s kind of from their point of view, so it’s a number of facets of the whole life of a group of people. I think that’s what drew me to it: the fact that it’s such a rich journey. To be able to glimpse a group of people’s lives from so many different points of view is a pretty rare opportunity in films.”

Last Orders is not just one long bout of nostalgia, however. In the course of the trip to Margate - laid on by Vince in a shiny blue Mercedes - a lot of secrets are uncovered. There is tension, for example, between Vince and Lenny over something that happened many years ago and which finally boils over in Margate. And then there is Amy’s reason for not wanting to be part of the final trip to Margate: the fact that she and Jack had a severely handicapped daughter, June, who has spent her life in a home and whom Jack had always refused to acknowledge. Last but not least, a long-ago affair between Ray and Amy is also revealed.

“When we were trying to raise the money, people were saying, ‘Oh, it’s such a local story’,” says Schepisi. “I think the thing they miss is that it’s a small place that speaks to the larger world. I think very few people realised the scale on which this picture had to be made. It has 17 different time periods and it’s tiny moments from people’s lives. It’s a very large canvas.”

“To be able to glimpse a group of people’s lives from so many different points of view is a pretty rare opportunity in films,” says director Fred Schepisi, who adapted Graham Swift’s Booker Prize-winning novel.

For Caine, meanwhile, there was another element in the story which came very close to home. Schepisi even makes a joke out of it. “Michael jumped in pretty well straightaway,” he says. “But I think he was muttering a bit about how he knew that one day he’d have to play his father!” What Schepisi is referring to is that the character of Jack - a working-class butcher from Peckham with strong family ties - is very similar to Caine’s own father, a Billingsgate fish porter from Bermondsey (who moved to Peckham) and for whom family was, equally, very important.

But there’s more. “I have a life here,” says Caine. “In the picture, I die of cancer in St Thomas’ Hospital. And I’m extremely experienced with that: my father died of cancer in St Thomas’ Hospital…”