But to be a storyteller is, in itself, an ancient and honourable profession – stories, after all, are magic. Homer would have described himself a storyteller – and, you can bet that, when cave men used their newly-forged language to pass on hunting tips (and doubtless to exaggerate their skill),  it was in the form of stories: “I was hiding on the ridge as the sun came up, near where the blue flowers grow; the deer came down the valley to drink at the pool . . .“

And it’s even more fundamental than that. Human beings think in stories. For instance, if someone tells you that such-and-such a country has a population of ‘X‘ million and spends ‘Y‘  billions on Healthcare, which it plans to increase by ‘Z‘ percent – it means almost nothing without a calculator. But, say that their new President was elected to power on a promise to increase health spending, we get it immediately. Better still, say that this new President reneged on the promise and set about building himself a lavish presidential palace instead – then we have a story. With a dynamic and a villain (no hero as yet) and we want to hear more, a resolution – Did he get away with it? Did he get his comeuppance?  And what happened in the end? 

Let me give you another story, this one absolutely  true. We had been on holiday in Spain and our flight home was delayed. Our children, who were both under six, were getting bored and a bit fractious. So we sat on the concourse floor and I started to tell them a story, one of many that I used to invent (more or less on the fly) about a friendly dragon named ‘Swoop’ who had adventures. This was not, let me stress, by any means a deep or clever tale. I paused towards the end, plotting the finale in my head, and a voice at my back said: “Don’t stop – we want to know what happens next.”