Well, not literally. Thank you, Ms Bullock, you can sit down now. My point is, not all psychopaths are wild-eyed serial killers. It’s a spectrum disorder, like autism. At one end, you’ve got Ted Bundy and Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper, Hollywood’s bloodthirsty predators.

And at the other you’ve got the brain surgeons and TV presenters and tech moguls and corporate business leaders. The people everyone needs to be ruthless and focused and unemotional in a crisis.

People like me.

When I tell people I’m a psychopath, their response is usually a mix of horror and fascination. I mean, who admits to being ‘deceptive, callous, manipulative, reckless, superficial, predatory’, right?

[Laughter]

And I’m not going to lie to you: I’m all of those things.

You’d think it’d put people off me, but no. You might be nervous, but you’re riveted and excited, too, aren’t you?

And why wouldn’t you be? I’m extremely charming when I want to be. I’m well-liked. I have lots of friends. Functionally, I’m a good person. I’m one of the ‘safe’ ones. I love to cook, and I’ve got a dark sense of humour. I often make people laugh. People come to me with their troubles.

So what makes me so different from most of you?

Well, I’m not going to bore you with lots of science about the amygdala and the orbital frontal cortex, but the bottom line is, psychopaths like me are biologically incapable of empathy.

A dozen scientific studies have confirmed it: we literally can’t feel your pain. We don’t experience fear or remorse. So we don’t care about blending into society. We’re not bothered by punishment or disapproval.

It’s a miracle more of us aren’t serial killers, to be honest.

We’ll lie and cheat to get what we want, but we don’t make moral choices; we make pragmatic ones. Usually we’re not out to get you. We’re like water: we’ll always find the quickest and easiest route to where we want to be, and if you get in our way, you’ll be washed away.

But we’re as capable of love and nurturing as we are indifference and destruction. Most of us aren’t a threat; remorse and empathy may not come naturally to us, but we can learn to care. It takes practice: it’s like learning a different language, and it’s exhausting. But we want to fit in, we want to be good people, and so we work at it.

Like I said, usually we’re not out to get you.

Usually.

A small minority of psychopaths have a predisposition to calculated violence; violence that’s cold-blooded and planned, and scary as hell.

I’m as terrified of people like that as you are. It’s not like psychos give each other a hall pass.