In between, he spent six years adjudicating on a host of high profile complaints against the UK press, worked on detailed media industry B2B reports, coached some of the world’s leading newsrooms, and lectured at UK Universities on everything from journalism to marketing to ethics.

If there’s anything that links those seemingly random gigs, it’s an addiction to investigating what makes people tick - finding those hidden or obscure motives, and creating editorial products that they’ll love. That fixation isn’t limited by the UK’s borders; as the editorial director of a media company with more than 50 partners around the world, that habit of finding often hidden motives has a multi-cultural dimension.

Mark Payton has worked in an extraordinary variety of consumer media markets, helping create a range of editorially-led products that’s just as bewildering - including an award-winning app for soccer stats addicts, a social media-only network for horse racing fans the world over, and buyers’ guides to everything from cars to personal finance to technology.