Pottinger

of a gutter weasel on garbage day, he soon spotted the impending disaster and skittered into disaffected and condescending exile in August 2016.

When Tim Bell doesn’t want your business, you know you’re bad news. Henderson, meanwhile, the CEO of Bell Pottinger with the oleaginous sheen of an otter in an oil slick, lacked such foresight. After pushing the how-should-I-knowwhat-my-employees-were-up-to? defence as far as it could go, he was forced to take a fall days before the PRCA ruling in September – but his resignation proved futile.

His fiancée, Heather Kerzner, the socialite ex-wife of Sol Kerzner, had invested millions of pounds in Bell Pottinger only months before the Gupta scandal started playing out, and together the two owned 37% of the company, a share that quickly became worthless.

A few days after Henderson’s resignation, the Henderson-Kerzner wedding was put on indefinite hold. There’s only so much schadenfreude to be extracted in the circumstances, but South African observers took what they could.

Bell and Henderson were industry heavyweights who had built up Bell Pottinger into an enormously effective company that employed hundreds of people and influenced millions.

To suggest that this isn’t a case in isolation, and that the two men and their Geoghegan-esque minions are part of a greater problem, is an understatement of some magnitude.

● 50 People who Stuffed Up the World by Alex Parker and Tim Richman is published by Burnet Media and distributed by Jacana Media.