A friend and I were chatting after work a few months ago when I mentioned my devotion to Ocado, the online grocery delivery service.

“No!” she shrieked. “You have to stop using it. Haven’t you read about Tim Steiner’s divorce?” I ignored her. I had seen that Mr Steiner, Ocado’s chief executive, had left the mother of his four children and taken up with a Polish model many years his junior.

But as far as I was concerned, other people’s marriages were a foreign country and Ocado was the only source of my favourite pumpkin soup. More crucially, in all the years I had used it, its delivery drivers had never once been late. If they even suspected a delay, I would get a text explaining why and by how many minutes. In a world of lateness, it was a rare, glittering star.