‘Sounds like a comedy sketch, lunch with a person on Ozempic’

Johann Hari is giving me career advice. This isn’t part of the plan. But as you already know if you’ve read one of the British author’s three bestsellers – “self-help” for the addicted, depressed and distracted – Hari can suggest an expert for every problem.

“When I’m doing my job well, I think of myself as a concierge,” he says, sitting in the corner of Sydney’s original brunch spot, Bills, in Darlinghurst. “For me, always the happiest moment with any of my books … is when one of the experts I’ve written about, emails me and says, ‘oh people have read your book and are emailing me’. Because I’m like, ‘ah, I connected you with the people who need you’. My job is to find those people.”