Peter Thiel is incredibly serious, says biographer Max Chafkin of the man he has been researching since 2018. “He throws some good parties, I understand, but I don’t think he’s the life of those parties.”

Thiel may not be lighthearted but he clearly knows how to wield irony: he described forcing the closure of Gawker Media by secretly funding a libel suit brought by wrestler Hulk Hogan as “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done”.