It shouldn’t have been any surprise that, when asked to pick a restaurant for Lunch with the AFR, Cameron Mackintosh chose Rockpool. The grand, Art Deco dining room in the old City Mutual Building on Hunter Street is a Sydney institution. But immediately before that, for a few years in the 1990s, it was Mackintosh’s office, and so has a place in the personal narrative of the world’s most successful musical theatre producer.

“My office was over there,” says Mackintosh, pointing past Mike Cannon-Brookes at a nearby table as he rapidly describes how the space looked when he was in residence. “It was much more glamorous,” he says, before gesturing to the “CM” inlaid into the floor. “Luckily, it had the same initials as me, so we could save on that.”