Exactly - the key thing to understand is that you are stretching or 'texturing' the milk, not foaming the milk. No foam, no, it's stretched milk. Which that means is there are lots of tiny air bubbles held together by the milk proteins.

You may find this easier to achieve by using cold milk and holding the milk jug (a metal one) at 45 degrees and creating a vortex on the surface by holding the wand just under the top of the milk, until the level of the milk has risen in the jug. Don't get too obsessed by the temperature as the thermometers tend to have a lag - I'd just wait until you can't hold your hand to the jug for more than a second, and you're ready.

That said, I've yet to find a domestic machine that's powerful enough to achieve this easily, but I've got only a mid-range Krups. Having worked as a barista in New Zealand, home of surprisingly good coffee, I despair of the bile churned out in the UK. The best coffee I've found in London is the Monmouth Coffee Company; Flat White on Berwick Street; and, remarkably, the estate agents cum cafe at the end of my road.

Yes, coffee geekery is widespread!