BUT THEN HE CAN'T REALLY SAY if he's strictly an optimist or a pessimist and, no, doesn't know if he's an extrovert or an introvert, either. "I've never really thought about it.
I don't know what that tells you." He doesn't know what he dreamed last night - or ever: "I don't dream." Just hits the pillow at 11 and "bang"-is out till around 5. He doesn't have a favourite novel or poem, wasn't scared of anything as a child. "Nothing. Nophobias." Hmmm, this is harder than I thought. Quickfire is perhaps not his format.
He will be more relaxed and expansive in our second interview a week later when, sun-glazed from the Normandy beach, he will tell me about the D-day commemorations where he stayed the whole day and Rishi Sunak did not. Like Gordon Brown's mutter of "bigoted woman", Theresa May's dementia tax, Richard Nixon's sweaty top lip, the D-day debacle will mark a shift in the campaign. Starmer will lean back on his office sofa, put his hands behind his head and reveal his shirt underarms-impressively dry for a Friday of meltdown news. He will say he's thought about my questions and has something to tell me.
But a week is an eternity in politics and so today, in Scotland, he's still cautious of tripwire headlines. Who can blame him? At 20 points ahead with a hostile media, he has everything to lose. So, he tiptoes around the question of Downing Street, caveats any mention with "if we get that far"; "we don't want to get ahead of ourselves".
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