In the joyous, febrile weeks since Bashar al-Assad’s fall, attention has understandably focused on the bravery of Syrians who took up arms against him over the years of barbaric struggle.

But courage comes in many forms, and for one middle-aged man in Damascus, it involved sitting in his sixth-floor office looking out over the parliament building every day at noon.

Armed with pills to calm his heart, a monitor showing CCTV footage of the stairs and a passport in his pocket at all times, Anas al-Madani, the founder and head DJ at Nojoom FM, would calmly begin the station’s most popular programme, titled “Against Corruption”.

Politicians, police, judges, even relatively senior regime figures – none escaped his wryly excoriating commentary.

“Every day I would get ready for the police to call and summon me to the precinct,” said the 54-year-old. “I had this nightmare of walking out of my office, getting hit by a metal bar in the face and put in the boot of a car. Then that would be it.”