Well, yes. Clare’s declaration of cautious optimism for the state of high-street sales in future, and a bigger dividend,seems to have been interpreted as a signal to break out the bunting for the whole UK retail plc. This, in turn, has left the Dixons boss in a bit of a spot. For a man who doesn’t, you imagine, get excited by much, the market’s over-reaction to what he thought were a few well-chosen words about prospects must be perplexing. The irony is that much of it comes down to character. If the unexcitable Clare thinks that things are getting better, well, wahey, here we go, and I’m buying.

Sitting in shirtsleeves, tie off, in his glass-panelled office in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, Clare now appears characteristically nonplussed by it all. “You shouldn’t get the impression that I’m overly optimistic about the next six months,” he says, explaining it in his usual low-key, rational way. “I just said that the mood in the market and within the company was more optimistic.”

Dixons has worked hard, he continues, to identify what has been going wrong. It has addressed the issues and taken money out of its cost base.

“Our share price has been heavily depressed since we issued a profit warning in January,” he says. “We haven’t updated the market on the progress we have made since then. We had some reasonably good news, so I suppose you shouldn’t be surprised at the bounce back. Let’s just see what it all settles at.”

Loftily tall, bulky, his florid face topped by a sweep of white hair, Clare exudes calm. Colleagues describe his sheer size and placid demeanour as a source of infectious reassurance, especially in tough times. And that is exactly what the Dixons group, which also runs PC World, Currys and The Link, has been through recently. Christmas sales were disappointing, consumer confidence was dented in the run-up to the second Gulf war and an ongoing Competition Commission investigation into the selling of extended warranties — a big source of income — had depthcharged the share price.

Clare spent the early part of this year holding rally-the-troops meetings in staff canteens, telling them to hold the line and work through the tough times.

And the line has held. The factors that dented Dixons over the past year — the reduction in margins on mobile phones, the disappointing sales of games consoles, the increasing competition to offer credit products and the drop-off in warranty sales — are beginning to unwind, says Clare. Margins are being “upheld” and Christmas planning will be better. Growth prospects in Europe, where Dixons now has retail chains in Italy, Spain, France, Scandinavia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, look promising. Then there are this autumn’s bonuses: the first flat-screen televisions on sale at mass-market prices and the new wireless technology in computers. No wonder the market became excited on Wednesday.

Clare speaks slowly, methodically, working his way through the items, but the cumulative logic is compelling. Likewise his solid performance at a public hearing on warranties in front of the Competition Commission in April. That was watched by analysts who promptly decided Dixons had won its case on “service agreements”, (as Clare likes to term them). Cue another share-price leap. Perhaps he should come out of his shell more often.

But that’s not his style. Since taking over from the group’s founder, Sir Stanley Kalms, nine years ago, Clare, now 52, has quietly stamped his mark on Dixons, not through charisma or high profile, but through careful organisation and rational precision. That tends to overshadow his undoubted retail and marketing flair.

For evidence of that, look at how the £5.8 billion-turnover group has changed under his watch. It has bought and greatly expanded the PC World chain (sales up 15% last year), created the Freeserve brand (£240,000 invested, sold for £1.5 billion), and established The Link, among other initiatives. “How many retailers have set up brands like that in the last decade?” asks one former colleague. Answer: not many.

But it’s his unusual mix of method and instinct, and his unflappability that those around Clare say are his core strengths. They cite the regular Monday-morning review meetings, when he goes through the mass of figures that have come in over the weekend, pulling out pertinent details, quizzing his executives on individual shop refits or margins on the most obscure items. Then there is his absorption in the minutiae of advertising, both his own and that of his rivals.

“He has the most formidable analytical brain of any client I’ve ever had,” says David Kershaw, head of M&C Saatchi, Dixons’ ad agency, who has worked with Clare for 12 years. “And there’s never any panic.”