On the day he was told he would play for England again Manu Tuilagi could not keep still.
“He’s certainly got a big grin on his face, like a Cheshire cat,” said team mate Ben Youngs. “He’s verrry excited. But Manu’s like an excited kid at the best of times. This is no different.”
It says a lot for Tuilagi, who wins his 27th cap off the bench against Australia on Saturday, that he remains the life and soul after four often lonely years working to repair a broken body.
He has not played for England since March 2016, not started a Test match since 2014.
Yet there he is in the England hotel either taking money off his team mates on the pool table or wowing them with his coffee-making skills. Never down, always lightening the mood.
The 27-year-old has not always got a laugh out of his audience.
Martin Johnson’s face was a picture – of fury – at the 2011 World Cup when told Tuilagi had jumped off a ferry in Auckland harbour the day after England’s elimination.
Stuart Lancaster, who succeeded Johnson as England boss, was equally unimpressed in 2015 when the Leicester centre was convicted of assaulting two female police officers and a taxi driver.
In between, Tuilagi got himself into more bother by making a ‘bunny’ gesture with two fingers behind the head of then Prime Minister David Cameron while posing for a photo with the 2013 Lions outside No.10.
"No need to apologise,” Cameron tweeted. “I know it was just a bit of fun.”
The Samoan-born powerhouse needed a sense of humour to get through the dark days, which he feared might never end as his body succumbed to groin, hamstring and repeated knee problems.
“My nature is to always think there will be light at the end of the tunnel," he later said. "But it has been tough.”
Tuilagi finally gets to walk out into that light this afternoon, his first England appearance since the birth of daughter Leilani.
He never needs a reason to be cheerful. But he certainly has one on Saturday.
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