Sitting in his sparse, ultra- modern meeting room on the first floor of a residential street in Belgravia, he points out that when he started the agency, the sports angle came about by accident. Celebrity was what he was really after.

“The value of celebrity seemed to be quadrupling year on year,” he said. “People need more escapism and they project that on to celebrities.”

Thompson began his agency after he ran into Martine McCutcheon, the actress and singer, at a party. “We got on and, because she needed a manager and I was available, I became her manager.” McCutcheon had just sold a million albums. She was also a ready-made brand.

The sports angle came from his private passion. Thompson is a director of Surrey County Cricket Club and chairman of various testimonial and charitable committees.

His strategy is to scoop up players at their peak. Merlin Elite sharpens its clients’ images to maximise their appeal while at the same time protecting what Thompson calls their “brand integrity”.

The company’s turnover last year was £1.4m. Its fees come from fixed contracts or a percentage of the stars’ earnings for each event. “We negotiate each one individually,” said Joanna Burns, one of the firm’s six employees. Burns, a former Olympic rower, was the youngest female football agent in the country before joining Merlin.

For television appearances the firm works with specific broadcasters, rather than splashing its clients all over the screen. “We like to get our clients popping up where you don’t expect them,” said Thompson. “It has more impact and the public sees a side to them it hasn’t seen before.”

Careers in sport are short, and even if the capped English rugby players’ stock is at an all-time high now, it is unlikely, for most of them, to get any higher.

“Matt Dawson is two, possibly three, years from retirement and he was beginning to think about what he was going to do afterwards,” said Thompson. “So is (fellow client) footballer Dion Dublin. If I do my job well, I can give them the option of retiring and moving straight into a new career.

“Sportsmen are keen to know what they can do once they have stopped playing,” he said. “Alec Stewart can stand at the wicket and score runs at will against a bloke throwing balls at him at 90mph. But it may be different when it comes to sitting in an office and be- ing confronted with a spreadsheet.”

From a business perspective, rugby has a different cachet from, say, football. It is more upmarket, for one thing. “The thing about rugby players is that they are so bright,” said Thompson. “There’s a huge corporate opportunity with rugby that isn’t there for football.”

Merlin Elite promises to manage the private, as well as the professional, lives of its clients — “whatever support is needed, emotional or professional”. “We keep the black book of all black books. We always know where to find the right lawyer, for example, in the event of a divorce or libel case.”