Your team-mates appreciate your all-action playing style; are they as keen on your culinary skills?

I don’t have the St Helens lads round — they’d just say it was too fancy and would lambast me. I’ve always loved fresh ingredients and I can be a bit of a health freak. Pasta’s a speciality and seafood linguine is my signature dish. Friends say I do a lovely Moroccan lamb tagine.

Have any of the players been to the sandwich shop you part-own?

We do gourmet sandwiches and skinny lattes, so maybe not. It’s in Culcheth, near Warrington, and when I went to work behind the counter there for a couple of weeks after the World Cup last year, people kept popping in to check if I’d signed for Warrington. I’m OK now with the various coffees, wraps and salads, but the real insight has been in setting up and helping to run a small business. I’m very mindful that your playing career doesn’t last that long.

You’re a Co-operative Good for Everyone ambassador, but do you get caught shopping at Tesco’s?

Er, never, I think. Besides, I get sent fantastic hampers with Fairtrade and ethically sourced goods, which I firmly believe in. They’re great for the cooking, too.

Is your reputation as a prankster well merited?

I like playing jokes but the best ones are played on me, like the royal blue door I was ever so proud of at my house in St Helens and which our full back, Paul Wellens, thought it’d be really funny to paint in the Saints colours with a massive red “V”. I was furious at the time.

But a little birdie tells me you cruelly played a practical joke on your girlfriend at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Who told you that? It’s true, though. Megan likes a joke as much as me, so I got down on bended knee at the Eiffel Tower in the world’s most romantic city, reached inside my pocket and pulled out my passport. She laughed. She didn’t throw me off. We’re still together, anyway.