While he cannot be certain sure of how his astonishing figures might match up to other similarly engaged figures within the sport - and to be in with a chance they must have been at meetings for the last 70-odd years, which should narrow the field a little – he is clear as any man of figures can be about the total. Which is 369.

Down the years I have discerned a common factor in statisticians. They love a challenge. They can’t resist it.

Set them a question in their chosen field and they run across that field like a dog chasing a rabbit, plunging through every hedge, fording every stream and getting their paws covered in mud in their efforts to seize the prey.

My latest question to Stan - who has, with such courtesy, answered so many others from the likes of me and my colleagues - had a similarly electric effect. "Stan. What was the first world record you saw?”

On this occasion little ground needed to be covered. But he was off. And of course he checked the answer before confirming.

It was the women’s high jump mark of 1.72 metres set by Britain’s Sheila Lerwill in the Women’s Amateur Athletic Association meeting at the White City stadium on July 7, 1951 - the day before his 20th birthday.

That surpassed the mark of 1.71m set by Fanny Blankers-Koen of The Netherlands in 1943 - five years before she wrote her name into Olympic history by winning four golds at the 1948 London Games as a 30-year-old mother-of-two.

Despite being a talented sprinter at club level, Stan had not watched a big athletics meeting until he got to see the biggest of them all after being given a ticket for the July 31 programme at the London 1948 Games .

He saw Blankers-Koen qualify in her 100 metres heats. He watched Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia, already the men’s 10,000m champion, qualify second in his 5,000m heat. Among the finals he witnessed was the men’s 100m, won by the American who was supposed to have won the 110m hurdles, Harrison Dillard.

"I only went for one day, but that day changed my life," he said. "I had always been a football fan but I never went to see another match after that. Some people find it irritating, but I love the fact that in athletics there is something going on all the time.

"I spent the next six months going to libraries reading every book and magazine I could about the sport."

Question number two to Stan was another relatively easy one. "Stan, what is the most recent world record you have seen?" Answer - the men’s 4x100m mark of 36.84sec set by a Jamaican team anchored by Usain Bolt at the London 2012 Olympics.

Stan’s career as a stat-wise athletics follower has fallen into three main sections. After 20 years of operating as a fan and travelling to many far-flung meetings he was invited in 1969 by Sir Arthur Gold, Honorary Secretary of the then governing body for British athletics, the British Amateur Athletic Board, to become "advisory statistician" for the team selection committee.

A year earlier he had been asked by the then BBC commentator Norris McWhirter to help with some cross-country events and had gone on to sit in at the London studios to provide expertise and filling material for coverage of the 1968 Mexico Olympics.

That began a working relationship that lasted until the 1992 Barcelona Games as Stan worked alongside Ron Pickering - until his death in 1991 - and David Coleman in the BBC commentary box.

For the past 20 years he has been a regular client with Track & Field Tours groups, which have happily survived the hammer blow of COVID-19 lockdown under the guidance of the excellent Dave Barnett and are now busily booking for next year’s World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon and European Championships in Munich.

Last week Track & Field Tours highlighted Stan’s achievements thus: "Since 1948 and the London Olympics 90-year-old Stan Greenberg has watched athletics in 35 countries attending 9 Olympic Games, 13 Commonwealth Games, 13 World Outdoor championships, 13 World Indoor champs, 8 World Cups, 19 European Outdoor champs, 23 European Indoor champs, 17 European Cups and 13 World Cross-country champs. Not to mention 60+ AAA/UK national outdoor champs and c50+ AAA /UK national outdoor champs.

"He has had unique reasons as to how this has been achieved but nonetheless who can match that?"

Who indeed?

The towering men’s long jump world record of 8.95m set by Mike Powell in one of the great athletics head-to-heads against his United States rival Carl Lewis took place at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, where Stan was in attendance for the BBC. But it does not make his list.

Why? Because he didn't actually see it with his own eyes. Being at a meeting where a world record took place doesn’t make it as far as he is concerned. You have to have been actively watching, and when Powell responded to Lewis’s huge leading marks with that epic fifth-round effort Coleman had just asked Stan for something urgently and he was checking in a book…

Disappointing. But it didn’t come near the disappointment he felt after deciding the night before not to bother with covering the 1954 meeting at Iffley Road, Oxford, where Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile.

He had covered the meeting numerous times, and had a ticket, but thought it would be called off because of rain. He was also getting a hard time from his work about taking days off. And he'd got soaked covering a meeting in London the night before. And so, on balance...

"It was the worst decision I ever made in my life," he said.

Question number three, Stan. "What was the world record that had the greatest effect upon you?"

Here, surprisingly, there was no mad scramble involved. It was the men’s triple jump record of 18.29m set by Britain’s Jonathan Edwards at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg - a mark that still stands.

"There used to be a character called Wilson the Wonder Athlete in the old comic, The Wizard. He was a heroic character and one of the stories involved him saving a child from a swirling river by doing a triple jump using two small islands to get across.

"In the story the effort was measured and it was 60 feet. I always remembered that, and in Gothenburg Jonathan’s winning distance was exactly 60 feet."

Much of Stan’s life within athletics has been intertwined with his fellow statistician and writer Mel Watman, who died last month aged 83.

"He was one of my oldest friends - and I was best man at his wedding,” Stan said. "We met in 1955 and I doubt whether there was a day during the last 40 to 50 years when we didn’t speak to each other.

"I think he was the greatest statistician and writer in athletics."

Generous praise from a generous man.