By Brian Viner

It is more than four years since I first interviewed Kevin Pietersen. That was a couple of months before the 2005 Ashes, when his fame did not yet transcend cricket, and although he had announced his prodigious talent in a one-day series in his native South Africa the previous winter, even cricket fans weren't sure whether he should play at Test level for England. I spent more than a hour with him that day: he was thoughtful, chatty, and engagingly eager that I should consider the interview worthwhile.

Just over a year later I interviewed him again, at Lord's. By then he was a cricketing superstar. He was also surly, uncommunicative and could barely be bothered to lift his eyes from his mobile phone. He gave anodyne answers to my questions while simultaneously texting, and I went away lamenting this vivid example of sporting fame and burgeoning fortune going to a fellow's head. But perhaps he was just having a bad hair day, which brings me to my latest encounter with Pietersen, in a photographic studio near Leicester Square, the day he is being unveiled as the new Brylcreem Boy. He was there from 7.30am to 4pm having photographs taken. It is now almost 4pm. So the portents for an obliging KP are not good for me. And yet, as I am ushered into his presence and he rises (and rises, and rises, he is a very big man) to greet me with a crushing handshake, he appears cheerful, almost zestful. Maybe because home time beckons at long last.
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