In the seven months since quitting his job as a senior government adviser, James Chapman has publicly vilified his former boss in a week-long Twitter tirade, faced bruising online abuse, and had his attempt to launch a (third) new career thwarted just four weeks in.

We first meet as his effort to reinvent himself at the embattled PR agency Bell Pottinger is imploding. Amidst trying to get the last working coffee machine in the firm’s London office to function, he declines an interview. His employer goes into administration the next day.