“I don’t want to look like a f---ing narcissist,” Mark Carnegie says. “Well, the truth is I am a f---ing narcissist; I just don’t want to sound like one.”

Close friends – there aren’t many – call him Cargs. It isn’t easy to categorise the 60-year-old bachelor. Labels he doesn’t dispute include venture capitalist, philanthropist, pseudo-intellectual, hunter, devoted father, failed husband, loudmouth, attention-seeker, egotist. At this moment, though, he’s a man in need of laundry.