When we were at primary school, my sister and I used to steal our mother’s rollers and nail varnish and curl each other’s hair and paint each other’s fingernails. My brother, meanwhile, would spend hours with his Action Man commando, pulling the cord in its plastic back and listening to it croak: “Enemy tank approaching!” and “Give me some cover!”

Later, when we put away childish things, my sister and I became journalists and my brother a stockbroker. Yet I now find that if only we had stuck with our early career leanings, things might have worked out a lot better for all of us.