Dan Wagner left his private school in north London at 16. Life, as he later told an interviewer, just wasn’t moving quickly enough. he got a job in a hi-fi shop, part of Richer Sounds, on Weymouth Street, and started selling things. “I was sort of one of those naturals,” he says, and soon he had a bet with his manager: he would sell something to everyone who came into the shop.

“Whoever walked in would walk out with something – that was part of the deal,” said Wagner when we met this summer. He is 45 now, a dapper, much-profiled serial entrepreneur, quick to challenge you in conversation, to correct the record, but somehow also quicker to please, to find common ground. You feel compelled to agree with him. He tells lively stories, puts on voices, will tap the table to make his point or – when you say something he disagrees with – let an expression of such visceral incredulity cross his face that he looks like he might never recover: “Whaaat?” he says, in apparent agony. Talking to Wagner is so action-packed he sometimes interrupts himself. “I’m excited about this conversation,” he suddenly said once, mid-flow, while we were talking. “Why am I excited about this conversation?”