The other night I went to a party and met a young man who had just left Cambridge. Slightly patronisingly, I asked him what he wanted to do with his life. He eyed me coolly and said that actually he had just been offered jobs by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the BBC and McKinsey.

This rather put me in my place, and I asked which he was going to accept. McKinsey, he said, and explained he had chosen it because the competition was even stiffer there than it was at the other places.