As England's new resident boy wonder, a magical talent to compare with Harry Potter and Wilson of the Wizard, James Simpson-Daniel has had quite a week already. On Monday night he was hauled up to speak to a packed charity audience at the Cafe Royal; yesterday, barely visible beneath a sea of microphones, he almost looked in need of adult protection himself.
Such is life when you are picked for your country at the age of 20 opposite Jonah Lomu, the world's most renowned human steamroller. The pair have met before, when the elusive Gloucester prodigy ran around Lomu to score a classic try in a game against the Barbarians last May. Test rugby, though, is a more daunting playground and Simpson-Daniel confesses he will be asking for sleeping tablets from the team doctor on Friday night.
Since learning of his selection when he saw his name on a flip chart at a team meeting, England's new right wing has been struggling, and mostly failing, to keep his pre-match nerves under control.
"I'm far more nervous than I was before the Barbarians match," he said. "This'll be my first cap game and I feel more pressure on me. I managed to get round Jonah once but people seem to forget he also brushed me aside a couple of times."
New Zealand will be trying to discover more about the diminutive, honest-faced lad with the sideburns. John Mitchell, the All Black coach, took a hopeful stab in the dark yesterday, suggesting Simpson- Daniel had "progressed on England's summer tour of Argentina". In fact, the man of the moment was injured and never travelled to Buenos Aires. Fact and Boy's Own fiction, clearly, are starting to blur.
So, for everybody's benefit, here is the tale so far. As the second of four brothers growing up in Yarm near Middlesbrough, Simpson-Daniel spent hours playing all manner of sports in the back garden but was not unmasked as an exceptional rugby player until his final year at Sedbergh, where Will Carling and Will Greenwood were also educated.
"We used to play in the yard and try and do the things we'd seen on telly but I've never actually met [Carling]. When he came back for the old boys' match he was always with the headmaster on the far side of the pitch."
Instead, realising in his last year "that I wasn't an academic", the young Simpson-Daniel played schoolboy rugby for Yorkshire and the North and attracted such interest from Premiership clubs that the school gave him two days off to visit would-be employers. Bath, Leicester and Bristol, among others, were keen but there was something about Kingsholm that felt right.
"I didn't know much about them and they weren't at the top of my list but I went down to Gloucester and felt more at home than anywhere else, really relaxed."
His team-mates immediately noticed the newcomer they now know as "Sinbad". "When he first turned up at Gloucester you could see immediately how talented he was," Trevor Woodman recalls. "James is a very quiet guy - he's not one to be in the limelight - but his ball skills were phenomenal."
A hat-trick of tries against Bath last season did nothing to halt the superlatives and then came Lomu. His mother Pauline had told her son to "run fast if Jonah comes anywhere near you"; instead it was the big man who, to update the old joke, watched Simpson and Daniel disappear in different directions and ended up clutching the hyphen.
Woodward has no doubt he can prosper again - "I've got no worries about playing him" - and his club captain Phil Vickery feels the same way. "He's young but he's a great, great kid. He's very level-headed and sensible and I've got real hopes for him. This weekend's a great stage and let's hope he goes out and does what he does for us every week."
If Simpson-Daniel can give Lomu both barrels for a second time, England will truly have a shooting star.
