And, for all his cynicism, Charlie trod so softly-softly that eventually I began to spy an escape from the recent depression I’d apparently slipped into. I’d enthuse Joseph Blake and Crosswell’s son Sam with some of the passion I’d started out with; we’d reinvent bloody Renee; I’d show Charlie I was back on track and move on to something I believed in.

By the end of the meal I was so drunk I actually felt happy.

I tried to tell Alex about Charlie’s plan and my new charges; I tried to explain that I feared I was on trial, that it felt like starting out again. Alex made a vague pretence of listening but his thoughts were on himself as Malcolm strung him along over the loan – and he was back and forth to Scotland so often that we seemed further apart than ever. Eventually I gave up trying to talk about myself.

My brilliant plan to play the great mentor collapsed at the first hurdle. Joseph Blake arrived alone on a Monday morning, a few days before Sam, who was still doing good in some Malaysian orphanage. I loathed the idea of Sam already, the spoilt rich kid with a pseudo social conscience – but the arrogant Joseph was something else. He came with a briefcase, a copy of the Telegraph and a bad attitude. I kept waiting for him to produce a monocle.

Joseph thought he had nothing to learn; in fact, he was ready to take charge from the moment he walked in. He argued with almost everything I told him; he was sulky when I asked him to chill out. He banged on about ‘Oxbridge education setting us up for life’ and wanted to make ‘radical TV’, but had no new ideas. He was a snob and an unutterable old fogey, and, worse, he was supremely unlikeable.

The following week Sam Crosswell sailed into the office like a bright ship on a stormy horizon. To my everlasting contrition, he turned out to be a really charming kid. Sunburnt and sun-bleached, slightly gawky and befreckled with the broad smile of someone who is genuinely relaxed with themselves, he soon had an admiring flank of older girls circling his desk like brilliant piranhas, wanting to know about catching waves in Costa Rica and his dad’s celebrity mates, more than happy to perch on the edge of his desk showing too much thigh and flirt all day. And I didn’t mind because Sam was smart and enthusiastic, not too grand to make the tea or do the photocopying or bash the phone for hours – plus he fielded new ideas all day long: some bad, some actually quite good. It was refreshing to have him in the office, if only to watch the girls pant after him.