Our engineers, architects and developers are also at fault for being, frankly, quite boring. In Britain we have rock-star hairdressers, chefs, designers and antiques experts, but where are the rock-star engineers or domestic architects? Who is the Paul Smith or the Conran of house design? Who is the John Galliano of public transportation? Are they so busy talking to bureaucrats, developers and accountants that they have no time to engage the public imagination?

Hear, hear. The UK – and the UK media – needs to turn its attention to innovative engineers: the people who make things happen in the physical world, not just the internet flavours of the month.