As well as performing comedy, I’ve been teaching stand-up skills and joke-writing for over a decade. When I first started, a friend who is a sort of business guru nodded sagely and said: ‘The people who made the most reliable income during the 1849 gold rush weren’t the miners, they were the people who sold whiskey to the miners.’ I won’t comment on the historical accuracy of that, but it sounds believable.

And if it’s just a metaphor, there’s also some truth in it.