After the strongman’s death in the 1990s, the building had several reinventions, but the old-school paintwork remains, and is now home to the Apollo Cafe, which celebrates his life. A laneway next door has been renamed Mighty Apollo Lane.

There was never any question of where Faine and I would meet for lunch.

It’s a far cry from the days when Faine would visit the top floor of the gym to meet Apollo, who also lived in the building in shockingly modest accommodations.

When he first visited, Faine had no idea of Anderson’s life as a showman who performed at travelling tent shows and fairs, and who had broken several weightlifting and other records – and he didn’t, at first, believe him.

“But he’d pull out these meticulously kept scrapbooks and he had all this photographic evidence, page after page. He knew what he was doing was exceptional,” Faine says. “Apollo was vain but also, in his own way, he was very matter-of-fact about it. To him, it was like, ‘well, that’s me’ - for everyone else it was, ‘you’re kidding!’”

When Faine was a regular visitor, West Melbourne was “all slums, panel beaters and brothels”, but perusing the cafe’s hip menu, it’s a different picture (although you’re still never far from a panel beater or a brothel). “Apollo would fall about laughing if he knew this was a cafe,” he says. “Although he’d like the name.”

Faine is pleased to see some Apollo-themed meals on the menu. I order the Apollo Benedict, which comes with Jamaican spiced ham hock and a lime hollandaise; he has the Mighty Apollo – poached eggs with Kaiserfleisch, black pudding, mushrooms and spinach. “Obviously I have to get that,” he says.

Both are delicious, although Faine says he’s not used to eating much fatty meat.

“And in case you can’t tell, I need to lose at least five if not 10 kilos – COVID kilos!”

While Faine’s book is a celebration of two extraordinary lives, it’s also a story of hard times. Thelma and Apollo grew up in poverty in Clifton Hill (where Apollo, a man of only just over five feet, taught himself to fight after being bullied), and a different era. Thelma’s story took her to the remotest part of the country where she ended up a pioneering publican in an era when few women worked, while Apollo lived an equally unusual life chasing the spotlight and claiming an almost supernatural gift as the root of his superhuman strength. He sought fame while Thelma wanted fortune. But neither seemed to achieve what they hoped for in their lifetimes.

When Anderson’s wife left him for one of his martial arts instructors, she also left their three sons behind – permanently. After Apollo suffered what would now be regarded a nervous breakdown, his boys were put into care, where they remained until they were 18 years old. They share their stories in the book, and Faine consulted them all the way; the Anderson story is a complicated one.

“Their lives were often very brutal, and I want them to know that they have every reason to be proud of their father and more than anything, I want to make sure his legacy is recognised and preserved,” he says. “Apollo at least is now immortal, which is what he desperately wanted. But I’m acutely aware that for me it’s a book but for his sons, it’s their lives.”

In many senses though, Apollo & Thelma is also about Faine’s life. The book takes several tangential paths, among them chapters about the struggle for Indigenous land rights, the late Frank Hardy and his involvement with the Gurindji walk-off at the Wave Hill cattle station (regularly serviced by Thelma’s pub), and another in which Faine reveals that his stepson (his wife Jan’s son) is a Bundjalung man.

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“It’s a bit of a genre-bender in that sense,” says Faine. “It’s not neat, but life’s not linear or neat, so I’ve woven some of my stories in there, but it’s all in context. I’m not trying to do a humble brag but I’ve got some stories that I think need to be told – some of them are in this book and some of them aren’t. The book goes off in directions that will … catch people unawares, but I reveal the reasons why, and why certain things, like what happened with the Gurindji, matters so much to me, why it’s important to stop pretending some of these things in our colonial past didn’t happen.”

There are also stories from his radio life, although these are probably less surprising to his long-time listeners. He pays tribute to former prime minister John Howard – “such an impressive and successful politician, whether you like his politics or not” – and talks about his run-ins with former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, in particular his infamous 1999 interview about Kennett’s former press secretary Stephen Mayne and his Jeffed.com website.

“He was so crass, so blunt, so aggressive, and personally abusive to me, and I thought ‘well, I’m not going to hold back’,” Faine says. “Someone suggested I am ‘settling scores’ but I’m not – I’m telling a true story. It happened, and people need to know it happened,” he says. “I’m not going to go so far as to say you have an obligation to, but if you have the opportunity, then you have to tell the story fearlessly.”

He doesn’t know if Kennett has read the book.

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“He won’t know until someone brings it to his attention. He still plays a role in the life of this city and state – good luck to him, although I must say, it somewhat puzzles me.”

Does he miss his radio career?

“God yeah. It’s addictive. But I wanted to leave at a time of my choosing, not someone else’s and before people started saying, ‘Oh, he’s not as sharp as he used to be.’”

He doesn’t miss getting up at 4.15am (“although I was on that clock for such a long time that my mind knows I don’t have to go to work, but my bladder doesn’t!”) but he misses the audience, his colleagues and the banter.

“I loved what I did. It was an incredible privilege – people throw that around and it’s become a cliche, but it’s true.”

More than a job, he says it was “a lifestyle”. “But I was turning 65 and there’s still time to do some other interesting things before I retreat into the garage and start breaking things on old cars,” he says, referring to his hobby of restoring vintage Citroens.

“Right now I try to do that one day a week,” he says. “It’s cheaper than a shrink!”

Apollo and Thelma: A True Tall Tale (Hardie Grant) is out now.