“I googled myself this morning,” said Saul LeSnide QC, the Advocate General For Self-Importance, “and discovered that I’m a god. One of the lesser gods admittedly, but a celestial being nonetheless. Probably akin to Aeacus or Dionysus. At this very moment people may be worshipping my graven image all over the world and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a nightmare.”

“I only asked if you wanted coffee,” I said.

“Make it strong,” said LeSnide, retrieving his phones. “Who knows how much of my time the mortals at the end of these two devices will insist upon.”

It’s difficult to express how much I disliked my new client. It was only our second meeting and I’d shifted from wanting to punch him to a whole new level of pain. I’m not generally given to fantasising due to my lack of imagination but it’s incredible how I managed to defy this with a whole range of elaborate torture devices specifically for his benefit, all of my own invention.

“I was thinking about a coat of arms for the LeSnide brand,” he said, apropos of my accepting him into the fold of my lowlife client base. “As my design interfacer, I imagine that’s well within your capabilities.”

“I imagine so,” I said. “What’s a coat of arms?”

“Heraldry,” he replied. “Blazoning. Armorial bearings. Tinctures.” Which certainly cleared it up. “To include the LeSnide motto, of course.”

“Which is?”

“Aquila non capit muscas,” he replied.

“Never Knowingly Undersold?” I asked.

“Wimpled whey-face,” he said, to my surprise. It was certainly an unusual motto. “It translates as ‘an eagle doesn’t catch flies.’”

“Oh,” I said. “I preferred ‘wimpled whey-face.’”

“I have no idea what it means,” said LeSnide. “It was just something my father used to say as he beat me. I grew to like it.”

“The beating?”

“Yes. But after so much beating I began to like the motto too.”

Meanwhile the mortals at the end of his two devices had run up a dozen missed calls between them and the incessant ringing was starting to wear me down.

“Can’t you put them on silent?” I asked.

“Silent?” he replied, offended. “Then I wouldn’t know how much I was needed.”

He returned to the subject of his coat of arms and detailed his requirements for the LeSnide heraldic crest. Ad absurdum.