Tea and Welsh cakes marked the retirement of top Welsh civil servant Sir Jon Shortridge as he gave a rare audience with the media in Cardiff Bay.
The permanent secretary to the Assembly Government for nine years, Sir Jon, 61, is one of the old school.
"I took the view I am a public servant, it doesn't necessarily make me a public person," he said.
But he did offer some glimpses inside the world of a real-life 'Sir Humphrey'.
Sir Jon retires on Wednesday to be succeeded by Dame Gillian Morgan, a former doctor and health official.
Finance minister Andrew Davies was telling reporters last week that the civil service in Wales had to raise its game in the new era of devolution.
Sir Jon believed that the Assembly had secured its place in a more self-confident Wales.
But some in Whitehall still had to learn that the Assembly was a separate jurisdiction and ‘not simply another department’.
The £170,000-a-year permanent secretary largely shunned the limelight but confessed that at the beginning he personally took responsibility for facing AMs' questioning on virtually everything in the inquisitorial audit committee sessions.
During the first Assembly Government from 1999 ,with its wafer-thin majority, as accounting officer he was most concerned to ensure that there was no financial failings or scandal that could have placed the fledgling Assembly in jeopardy.
“I was determined that wasn’t going to happen,” he said.
From an administrative point of view, devolution had to be a "huge change for the better.”
But he added: “We had to put in a lot of time to do what we could so we haven’t had the Terminal 5 in the Assembly or Assembly Government.”
Since then he had identified a growing confidence and self-belief in Wales, reflected in the self-belief of the Assembly Government.
The recent decision on measures to eradicate bovine TB was “a carefully considered policy announcement, more than the potential culling of badgers”, well out in front of the UK government, which demonstrated the Assembly government’s maturity ‘which is great’.
“Devolution is now a done deal so far as Wales is concerned, there’s no going back.
“It’s now one of how far and how fast it’s moving forward.”
The greatest opportunity ahead of the Assembly lay with the convention led by former UN diplomat Sir Emyr Jones Parry into the prospect of full law-making powers for the Assembly.
The biggest threat was with the evolution of UK politics.
“If we are to have a referendum (on full powers) that has to be an affirmative resolution in the House of Commons,” he said.
Was the civil service equipped to handle the next stage of devolution if it comes?
"I have attracted into this organisation some people of stunning ability who weren't necessarily civil servants before they arrived and have not had any great personality changes because they are civil servants."
