THERE’S a slight awkwardness in the air at the groovy Chelsea offices of Halpern PR. Even the flickering Jo Malone scented candles don’t seem to be doing their soothing job. Sir Ralph Halpern, king of the 1980s high street, and I are not entirely on the same wavelength.

I want to ask him about the rollercoaster Burton years, about the impact of the notorious kiss-and-tell story that painted him as a “five-times-a-night” stallion and about his curious decision to leave the UK.

He wants to talk about the imminent auction of his goods and chattels at Christie’s. Sir Ralph, his second wife Laura and their four-year-old son are leaving Britain permanently and everything must go.

The £5 million retreat in Surrey has already been sold. The Chelsea apartment has gone. Sir Ralph is now living out of a suitcase in a London hotel. All that remains is to squeeze the best possible price out of his remaining possessions.

Sir Ralph, who has not always received good press, explains the reason he is speaking exclusively to The Times is to get publicity for the auction. He hopes it will raise between £500,000 and £800,000 to swell his retirement fund.

A salesman to the soles of his trainers (strange, clunky ones with red heels, incidentally), Sir Ralph wants to plug his paintings, his furniture, his gewgaws, even his Colefax & Fowler curtains — a snip with an estimate of £300.

Sir Ralph has accumulated a pile of possessions over the past 25 years. Whenever he went on store visits, he’d pop into the local antiques shop to see what he could unearth.

He says that he will be sad to lose it, but he seems unsentimental about it all, even putting under the hammer a pair of racehorse paintings by John Alfred Wheeler (estimate £6,000 to £10,000) given to him by Burton colleagues when he was sacked in 1990.

He shows me a picture of a motley collection of horse brasses and copper pots — things that to my eye used to decorate the walls of every other pub saloon bar — and gives me the full sales pitch.

“These are warm, friendly home antiques. It’s not a museum. You use them every day. I’m offering a tremendous opportunity because we’re not at the peak of the cycle,” he says, explaining that his unfashionable mix of Victoriana and heavy dark furniture will make a comeback as the fashion for light, minimalism fades.

The PR woman from Christie’s loyally pitches in: “The eclectic look is in.”

Yes, yes, all very interesting, but why is Sir Ralph leaving the country? He launches into a lengthy explanation about the bad English weather and England “getting more mixed in terms of the profile of the average person who lives here”.

Sensing he may have gaffed, he then praises Britain’s welcoming rules on immigration, which enabled his Jewish parents to flee Nazi persecution in Vienna in the 1930s.