When he speaks, David Beckham uses hand gestures with almost every word. Maybe he does this to show off the tattooed stick figure on his hand. It's carefully placed on the bottom of his palm, so strikingly obvious that I can't help touching it and asking for the story behind it.
It's a Harper original (Harper is Beckham's six-year-old daughter) - a drawing of a little girl with a heart alongside it.
Beckham doesn't seem to mind being touched.
"Two years ago she was just drawing at the table and I thought that it could be a really cool tattoo, so I took it to my tattoo guy and he recreated it and put it on my hand. It was really painful, and it only took 25 minutes. It's one of the most painful ones I've had," he smiles.
Anyone who's ever looked at pictures of the famous footballer knows it's not just his Harper who has a place on his canvas. His sons and his wife also feature prominently on his body.
Fighting the urge to make every topic relate to whisky - he's in Johannesburg to promote Haig Club whisky - he explains that every tattoo is special.
His hands look like crib notes, to be used as a reminder of his family when he's away from home and wants to discourage inappropriate advances. Tattoos like "Dream Big, Be Unrealistic", "Love", "Victoria", "Lead with Love" and the numbers "32", "7" and "99".
Perhaps all these tattoos are the reason the British establishment has been holding off knighting him, despite his work with Unicef.
Last year, when e-mails were hacked from Beckham's server in the "Beckileaks" scandal, his well-lubricated PR machine convinced the world that messages apparently expressing his desire for the honour were taken out of context.
Not surprisingly, this topic was highlighted in red as off-limits on the list of pre-approved questions we were required to send through before the interview.Securing 10 minutes "alone" with Beckham is nothing short of a miracle. It's common practice for international celebrities to convert journalists into Olympic high jumpers, and it's become acceptable.
The bureaucratic hoops publicists and managers make writers jump through range from the obscene "five-minute" interview, which is the time it took Adele to say ''Hello", to the submitting of a list of questions for pre-approval.
When Nicki Minaj was in South Africa, she granted me a three-minute interview. She answered only three questions. Lupita Nyong'o, who was in Johannesburg for the premiere of Queen of Katwe in 2016, allocated 20 minutes for each media interview.
In the case of this retired footballer, the 10-minute allotment came with a list of preconditions that made the supercilious Nyong'o interview and the quickie Minaj rendezvous seem like mere warm-ups.
The horizontal bar Beckham's team insisted on included no photography - a condition I thought was even more obscene than the allotted time I was allowed to interview him.After three submissions of questions, and three rejections - he doesn't like to be asked about his family, working with Guy Ritchie or Beckileaks - I expected the interview to be a drawn-out version of Hello with a mix of Cold Shoulder.
When my time came (I was last on the list) there was no time for long-winded formalities - 10 minutes doesn't allow for that. But Beckham's demeanor suggested that the penultimate interview had gone well and now he was ready for the only round that mattered.
Part of interviewing protocol is the unspoken rule that the journalist waits to be introduced. So when Beckham walks over, smiles and introduces himself, it's an act tantamount to industry felony.
"We can sit wherever you want," he says, positioning himself close enough to me to emit a faint musk odour and transferring just enough body heat to suggest a sense of familiarity.
He makes direct eye contact, bypassing his stony-faced publicity manager, there to ensure he recites his whisky script and isn't caught off guard by any question that requires a genuine answer.
Another unspoken rule is the seating arrangement. To maintain a position of power as the interrogator, while still creating a sense of intimacy I would have sat opposite him, but he sat right next to me.
Outside, the Maboneng rooftop venue buzzes with clinking Haig Club Clubman whisky and cola cocktail glasses and superfluous small talk about previous encounters with Becks, who is the brand's partner and co-creator.
One of the first things I notice about the man who was famously described as a prime example of metrosexuality is his hands. They are manicured and surprisingly soft, although through the grooming I can see evidence that Victoria must sometimes make him do the dishes and perhaps some gardening.
There are bottles of whisky on the table as a reminder that most of my questions should be about the brand. More jumping for his PR team that I try my best to ignore.
When Beckham first speaks, his voice is as thin as jam at the end of the month, before pay day. Despite this flaw it's still hard not to imagine him playing the lead role in a superhero film."I've always liked the idea of playing Batman or Superman, who wouldn't want to be Superman?" he answers when I ask him whether he'd take the gig.
''I'd like to be a good guy. I'm not sure I've got a villain in me, but you never know."
Then again, "I'm not sure I could play Superman with all the tattoos I have".
Of course DC hasn't asked him to star in any of its films yet, but it's a possible scenario in an era in which celebrities - especially the best-looking ones - are used to sell anything.
All this talk of superheroes presents the perfect opportunity to sneak in a question about a knighthood, which it seems could still be on his mind.
He does what people in his business do: he distracts me with his charm, expertly piecing unrelated keywords together to give the illusion that he's answering the question.
But there's a mischievousness in his smile and his eyes light up long enough to allude to the fact that this wasn't a question he was expecting or that I was strictly allowed to ask.
He changes the subject: "I'm very passionate about my country, I'm proud of the honours I have. I have an OBE. It was a very special moment in my life to be able to walk into Buckingham Palace with my wife and the grandparents. They're huge royalists, so the fact that they came with me was very special."Whenever you receive an honour from our royal family it's something you are very proud of. I'm very proud of the fact that I have an OBE, and that's all I can really say about it," he says.Beckham has this special skill: with every answer he craftily manages to mention Haig Club whisky.
In the end he even manages to link his tattoos to whisky. "I spoke about things being authentic, everything has to have a meaning. There's nothing that I have on me that doesn't mean something," he says, pointing to the bottles of whisky on the table.
In a perfect world, there would be no managers and no publicists - just two people appreciating the single-grain bringing them together.
But I know that Beckham is focused on the task of promoting his elixir - although we never break eye contact. There's a warmth that makes it easy to listen to his well-rehearsed monologue about why he chose to attach his name to a whisky.
"I'd always wanted to be a whisky drinker, it looks cool. I've seen my granddad drink it over the years. He used to drink it on special occasions and I always felt like it was a special drink," he recites.Towering over me at 1.83m and with 40 tattoos at last count, Beckham clearly finds it difficult to blend in to a crowd. So does he ever get tired of "celebrity-ing"? He shrugs, exposing his perfectly recreated smile, and says, "It happens from time to time."
My 10 minutes are up, but Becks seems fully engaged and willing to continue with the interview, even offering unsolicited information about his passion for food.
"I'm from the East End of London where we have a traditional dish - pie and mash with liquor. The liquor is stewed eels with parsley sauce. It doesn't sound great, but it's amazing. It's my favourite dish. I'm also a big sushi fan. I'll try anything, I eat anything. I love food," he says.
It's telling that a man worth $450-million (R5.3-billion) would list a working-class dish as his favourite meal.
My time is now up and the obligatory post-interview selfie is staged. Beckham takes the picture. As his hand lingers on my shoulder and down my arm, I realise something: for 15 minutes and 43 seconds, Beckham has managed to say everything and nothing.
This must be his super-power. In the celebrity world filled with nosy journalists determined to expose the transgressions of public figures, David Beckham is a demi-god among his colleagues...