In the spirit of Danny Rose, Taylor doesn’t hold back when it comes to this incendiary topic and the way he tells it, the treatment he has received gets to the heart of what brought him to Charlton in the first place.

After a successful few seasons at Wimbledon, during which he broke several goal-scoring records, it looked like Sunderland had won the battle for his services last summer. When Taylor instead opted for a move across London close to where he was raised in Greenwich, he was accused of taking the easy option of returning to his childhood home where he still has family and friends. Not so, insists Taylor, confirming that he would have got more money had he gone to Sunderland.

“The Sunderland manager [Jack Ross] was brilliant, but the board were trying to take the p***. I as a man of principle said you are not going to take the mick out of me. I can’t go into specifics because I don’t think that would be right, but there was a conversation whereby we were asking for a small bonus, and they turned round and said, ‘If he doesn’t achieve that bonus is he going to pay money for not achieving that bonus?’”

So why Charlton, a club that has been beset by a long-time dispute between its supporters and the owners, but has been steered nonetheless for a second time by Lee Bowyer into the playoffs?

“I knew that people would take notice of the person that I am rather than everybody sitting there believing things that had been bandied around about me, because there is no way you can play for Lee Bowyer and toss training off. There is no way you can play for Lee Bowyer and have a bad attitude. Being the man that he is, I knew exactly what would happen and I have gone over and above what was expected.”

In short, Taylor says that he got a bad name when he wasn’t given a proper chance at a previous club, which he names as Sheffield United, where he was on the books at Bramall Lane from July 2013 until June 2014.

“I have had a really hard time. I have dealt with racism in the camp, I have dealt with all sorts. Stuff that people wouldn’t even realise. I ended up getting alopecia [hair loss] through stress because of things that were going on at the clubs I was playing for.

“There was things said that were not right and there was nowhere you could turn to shine a light on those things. Especially when you are a player who has been brought in and is doing absolutely nothing. Not playing or playing five minutes here, 10 minutes there. You had no backing to say anything.”

Sheffield United wouldn’t comment on Friday.

Taylor also struggled subsequently to break through at Scunthorpe, but once he started playing regular football, as he did when he moved to Wimbledon, he started scoring goals regularly and he found his voice as well this season at Charlton, knowing that people would now listen to him.

He has championed many causes, most notably the fight against breast cancer, which the club has also embraced. Taylor has also taken a very public stand when he was subjected to racist abuse on his return to Wimbledon and at Bradford.

“We have shone a light on what’s happening and some people have decided that they wanted their five minutes in the spotlight by racially abusing footballers, which is completely unacceptable and there still needs to be something done about it.”

On Wednesday morning, Bradford police had been on to the club about abuse he suffered online last month. Also in the in-tray was Taylor’s player of the season award to be presented to him by the club.

It is all a far cry from his anonymous days when he went for a trial at Staines Town in west London as a 16-year-old calling himself a striker when he had been a defender all his life.

Or the carefree months that he spent travelling around Europe working as a model in Nike ads, when it appeared that his own footballing career was going nowhere. At the age of 29, he is finally playing for big stakes and all that he asks for and expect sin return is a fair hand.