In October 2022, as Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion (£34 billion), he posted a video of himself walking into the company’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a white porcelain sink. “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”, read the accompanying caption. 

It was not a typical way for an industrialist to announce a multi-billion dollar acquisition. But Musk, the world’s richest man, who has built a fortune of over $250 billion through the electric vehicle company Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX, has long had an eccentric public persona, in which humour makes up for a gravitas shortfall.

The sink post was an irreverent pun, but there was also a degree of warning; Twitter was his company now, and he would do with it as he pleased.