When George Orwell wrote 1984, he devised a language, Newspeak, in which a simplified and restricted version of English was introduced to diminish the intellectual and emotional range of the population. When I read words like “grindset”, “hustle” and “maxxing”, I experience the same cognitive shrinkage. These are terms designed to gloss over the complex interrelations of capitalism, and nobody has come to emblematise this kind of vapid corporate jargon quite like Steven Bartlett, the British host of The Diary of a CEO.
Bartlett has been on one hell of a journey. “In the first chapter of my diary,” he wrote, announcing the show’s first episode in 2017. “I discuss what it takes to be an entrepreneur.” The show was intended as a live memoir, charting his business adventures. Over the first couple of years, he only occasionally interviewed other bosses, like Leon’s John Vincent and nightlife tsar Sacha Lord. It wasn’t until 2019 that the show transitioned into a regular interview format, and, even then, the focus was heavily on entrepreneurialism. Episodes had explicitly mercenary titles like “£100m in Revenue Aged 27”, “From £27 to £72m” and “£45m in 4 Years”.
For half a decade, the show existed somewhere between a serious editorial outlet and a meme. Bartlett’s propensity for swigging the viscous protein shake Huel was easily mocked. When, in 2022, Matt Hancock, the secretary of state for health during the Covid-19 pandemic, appeared on the show, he struggled to chug the drink, much to the amusement of armchair commentators on Twitter. It demonstrated the show’s strange position at the midpoint between a serious political interview and lampoonable fodder for sketch comedians.
