There was a seminal article in Esquire in 1966 by Gay Talese entitled "Frank Sinatra has a cold". This photograph could be entitled: "Frank Sinatra has a sandwich".

Sinatra had just installed a $100,000 kitchen in his Palm Springs home. That represented, in 1964, when this picture was taken, the definition of "made it" – a man with a $100,000 income was on his way to the Forbes 500. Frank had just spent that on a kitchen. And been photographed eating a (I assume baloney or some such) sandwich. He wasn't naturally profligate – though he had given away $50,000 worth of gold cigarette lighters by the age of 30.

Frank's relations with food were fraught. On one hand he loved clams Posillipo, and ricotta torte for dessert; or veal Milanese, "paper thin", according to Salvatore Scognamillo, of Patsy's in Midtown, his favoured restaurant in New York. On the other, he abused fellow diners. There's an account in Craig Brown's book Hello Goodbye Hello of the Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne, who had offered unto Sinatra some imagined slight. "[Dunne] was having dinner at the Bistro in Los Angeles when Sinatra, clearly drunk, abused him loudly from a neighbouring table. Sinatra then turned his venom on… Lauren Bacall, Maureen O'Sullivan and Swifty Lazar in rapid succession. Finally he grabbed the tablecloth and pulled it from beneath all their plates and glasses, threw a plate of food over Lazar, and stomped out."

Do we forgive him for his unforgiving nature? For his continual capacity for reinvention, yes. For his hairpiece, no. For In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning, a thousand times yes. For his championing, ever, of African-Americans, again a thousand times. A savage angry small man, and torn, yet so blessed.