The mad venture – which my mother nicknamed ‘your father’s ego’ – would swallow my childhood. Years later I went on a quest to understand what really happened to his glittering folly

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BC Television Centre, 2 May 1990. “Who would spend £7m on an egg?” The question echoes around the TV studio. At home, six million people watch as chatshow host Terry Wogan smiles knowingly, his brown eyes twinkling. “Seven million pounds,” he repeats in his Irish brogue.

“And you can’t even eat it.”

The audience laugh. A heckler shouts that he’d offer a fiver for it. The band strike up. At the back of the studio, two burly bodyguards stand silhouetted. The egg’s diamond-studded shell sparkles under the bright lights.