I’ve made the call from my bedroom upstairs in Evelyn’s bungalow. She appears at the door with a cup of tea and when I ask, she says I’m welcome to borrow her PC. I know it’s downstairs in her lounge. I settle at the keyboard and Google ‘super yachts UK’. As any actress knows, the key to a new role is research. Pay attention to the script. Get inside this person’s head. Explore every nook, every cranny. Figure out what makes them tick.

The first surprise is just how many players this game has attracted. Shipyards in Southampton, Poole, Plymouth. The days of building proper vessels in the UK – cargo boats, ocean liners – have clearly gone. Instead, the go-to market demands something smaller and infinitely more luxurious.

I choose a firm at random and settle back to watch the presentation. It’s slick, polished, and wildly aspirational, a collage of gym-honed bodies aboard yachts that belong in a Bond movie. The sell is pitch-perfect: paths less trodden, horizons unexplored, pristine beaches, coral reefs in the rudest health. A lone super yacht arrows towards yet another perfect sunset, while a line of guests linger at the bar. These lucky few, we’re given to understand, are risking it all, making it all, enjoying it all. Beyond the material things in life, murmurs the voiceover, lies the sublime.

This, I know, is wealth porn, a glitzy tribute to the power of cool, married to unimaginable wealth. This is what you’re worth, and this – by implication – is what you deserve. By scrolling left or right, up or down, I happen on jewel after jewel from this Aladdin’s cave: fantasy cabins, the work of interior design superstars poached from leading five-star hotels; bespoke vanity areas, hi-tech private saunas, state-of-the art Jacuzzis; a hand-made spiral staircase in bubinga hardwood, linking all three decks; a sky lounge with a retractable roof for late-night stargazing and – should you be up for an extra million or two on the construction bill – a tastefully integrated landing pad for the private chopper.

The sell is relentless, and my eyes begin to blur. This is a world away from the modest little shag pad in the Antibes marina where H and I conceived our son, and I’ve never realized just how much money there is in the world, yet the crushing weight of all this opulence suggests that Malo and Sylvester might be on to something. If you’re willing and able to pay ten million pounds for one of these toys, wouldn’t you write a bigger cheque to make sure you got the better of Doomsday?