“At the time it was announced, which is years ago, there were only four or five [acts that had sold that many albums]. It was us, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and maybe one other. And it who wasn’t there that blew your mind: The Beatles, the Stones. I don’t think the Stones have had one album that’s sold more than 10 million copies in the US.”

One of Def Leppard albums in question, Hysteria, came out in 1987 — the same year as The Joshua Tree — and did similar sort of sales to U2’s defining album: roughly 25m copies. But it was in the US where Hysteria really cleaned up — selling 12m there alone, far more than Bono and friends managed.

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that the focus of Def Leppard’s huge world tour is centred on the US and when Elliott speaks to Review, it is from his home in Los Angeles. He has been State-side for rehearsals. And there’s a new album to promote too, Diamond Star Halo, which sounds every bit as epic, theatrical and downright thrilling as their very best work.

“It’s a pity we’re talking on Zoom,” Elliott says, “and not over pints at the Bailey.” He’s referring to a venerable pub just off Dublin’s Grafton Street. The Sheffield native knows the capital inside out, having lived here since the mid-1980s, but more of that later.

He is in good form today, and not just because rehearsals are going well. Diamond Star Halo was one of the unexpected upsides of the pandemic. “We had planned to tour in 2020, but not with a new album,” he says. “And then we had all this time and we started writing again.”