At the end of the first day's play here, Harry Brook volunteered the rather endearing nugget that he had used the break between Tests earlier in the Ashes to go on his first summer holiday since the age of seven. Destination? Ibiza.
Realising what he had just said and probably imagining the back-page mock-ups of him in Ocean Beach, Gray-Nicolls in one hand and Grey Goose in the other, Brook rushed to caveat.
"It was chilled out though!" he laughed. "I was there with my girlfriend, so I was on a chilling holiday."
England players have been pilloried in the recent past for such horrendous offences as playing golf the week before a Test match, so though (and not to sound like the island's tourist board here) Ibiza is every bit as much an idyllic retreat as it is Instagram-posers party scene, one can only imagine the heat were such a revelation made in the midst of a more chastening Ashes series.
Brook, though, is still learning his trade and while you hope the wonderful straight-talking will not wash out of his repertoire, the most impressive thing about the young batter's debut Ashes series has been his ability and willingness to adapt.
In another uncomplicated press conference this week, Brook coughed up the first acceptance that England had got it wrong with their approach in the Second Test defeat at Lord's, admitting his personal aggression strayed into recklessness as they collapsed against the short-ball and went 2-0 down in the series despite a Ben Stokes epic. His first Ashes half-century, he admitted, had come while playing “crap”.
Since then, England as a collective have tightened up and in Brook's batting there is clear evidence of a team more willing to pick their moments, 'Bazball' still an evolving force. A drop in strike-rate from 83 across the first two Tests to 76 across the next two-and-a-half hardly represents a major slow-down, but the eye-test reveals a batter playing with a little more maturity and looking all the more convincing for it, even when hooking Mitchell Starc for six in the penultimate over before lunch, as he did here.
A score of 85 on day one was the best among England's 283 all-out and Brook's highest of the series, a figure that has increased in all but one of the five Tests. (For a reminder of how ridiculous the 24-year-old's breakout winter was, consider that he made at least one score bigger than that in all five matches in Pakistan and New Zealand).
He expressed regret at not yet having passed three figures — "I was speaking to Zak Crawley the other day and it starts to creep into your mind a lot earlier than you think, probably around about 40 runs in" — but contributions have, even learning on the job, remained steady, no other batter having passed 40 at least once in all five games.
A Test average that coming into the series sat at a freakish 82 is still now, after nine rounds with the world's best attack, up at 65. And to think, consistency is supposed to be the Test novice's Achilles heel.
While this Fifth Test represents a probable final chapter to a fair chunk of the 30- (or even 40-) somethings on either side, this summer need be only the start of Brook's Ashes story.
Already burnished with the pedigree of a match-winning Ashes innings in his vital 75 in the Headingley chase, the Yorkshireman will go into future series with Australian respect earned and possibly, once team-mates such as Stokes, Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root are gone, the batter to fear.
"He's obviously going to play a fair bit of cricket for England over a long time," Starc said last night. "It's nice this is the last Test."
Brook was in the room, hovering stage-left, as the Australian quick paid those compliments, a boyish grin and look to the floor a reminder that this remains novel company for a young cricketer whose formative Ashes memories are as much littered with men now called team-mates and rivals as they are the greats of yesteryear. Into the rivalry's future, he will surely play a central part.
