Neil Gaiman hasn't changed his clothes in almost 30 years. All sulphurous green eyes and unsmiling in black leather, his persona rests upon accessibility to his original comic-con fan base.
It would work against the imaginative, multi-award-winning, multimillionaire author's interests to present himself in a manner commensurate to his earnings - which, as he faux-bashfully acknowledges, can be 'ridiculous' - or to live in a house that was anything less than American Gothic.
Appropriately, his fiancee, a 33-year-old ukulele-strumming cabaret singer with shaved eyebrows, once worked as a living statue and performs Radiohead covers under the name Amanda F***ing Palmer. His dog is named Cabal.
Those unfamiliar with his work may, after studying his photographs and reading certain quotes, assume Gaiman is a cult writer, rather than the internationally celebrated New York Times best-selling author of dozens of books - among them, novels, young adult novels, comics and, recently, Stories, the fantastically imaginative fiction anthology he edited with fellow multi-award-winning horror and sci-fi writer Al Sarrantonio.
Fifty this year, Gaiman is also responsible for the screenplays of big-tent films such as Mirrormask, Stardust, Beowulf and Coraline, in addition to an upcoming episode of Doctor Who and The Sandman, that esoteric, critically acclaimed superstar of the postmodern graphic novel and, in some ways, the most grandiose reflection of his id.
One of the biggest misconceptions remains that Gaiman spent his youth lurching from bedsit to library and back again. It is a misconception that he nurtures, whether consciously or otherwise, through omission.