Garry Watts has made it his business to “stop the titillation” and bring talk about sex out of the closet. But opening a factory in China today, the chief executive of Durex is not beyond making a joke. “I know that size shouldn’t matter, but this will be the biggest condom factory in the world.”

Producing 1bn condoms a year, the factory in Qingdao will supply the foreign and domestic markets, where Mr Watts has been nurturing a relationship with the “notoriously repressive” Chinese government, sponsoring World Aids Day, for instance.