There is one quote, however, that often struck me as incredibly naive, especially for a writer so obsessed with reinvention, and the pursuit of the mythical ‘green light’ of future’s promise.

“There are no second acts in American lives,” said Scottie and, though it’s the type of thing one might say surrounded by subordinates sipping an Old Fashioned at your Christmas party, it’s a bullshit line. Disproven repeatedly, by the fall and rise of countless public figures, most of them megalomaniacal men.

So, I dug a little deeper, hoping to discover that Fitzgerald never said it, proving this to be another WB Yeats/Dublin Marathon debacle. This year, Dublin Marathon finishers received a medal with a quote attributed to Yeats: “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet.”

Nice touch, only the poet never said it. Or, if he did, nobody can prove he did. Most Yeats scholars wince at the notion such a whimsical quote could be attributed to a man so indifferent to friendship, yet there it is, engraved for infinity on the back of a medal given to 22,000 finishers.

Anyway, back to F Scott.

Turns out, he did write, “there are no second acts in American lives”, not once, but twice, but what has long been missing is the context in which he wrote it.

The phrase appears in an essay called ‘My Lost City’, a love letter to New York, published in 1933, which had its own popular second act in the wake of 9/11. 

The complete line is: “I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s.” Which changes things. Quite a lot. It appears again in notes he made for his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, a decade later, proving Fitzgerald clearly had unfinished business with the sentiment.

Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald's most memorable creation, was a man obsessed with second acts and came close to realising his, only to be undone by hubris. If Fitzgerald was wrong about anything, it was in having Gatsby fail, as if sentenced to death by some cosmic force, to punish him for past crimes. In real life, Gatsby would have flourished — the more brazen and unapologetic the protagonist, the more successful the comeback. A world in chaos also helps.

One man who has made quite a living by dealing that currency of chaos has been the indomitable Piers Morgan. Less Jay Gatsby, more Rasputin, other than Rupert Murdoch, no man better exemplified the moral bankruptcy of Tabloid Britain, a zeitgeist that reached its apex at the turn of the last century when Morgan was in his first pomp, working his magic for The Sun, the News of the World and the Daily Mirror. Morgan has long been unapologetic about how these titles repeatedly targeted the vulnerable — including both celebrities and ordinary victims of horrific crimes — all to sell papers and to boost his own profile.

Guilty by association with phone-hacking as a means of illegally accessing people’s lives, his career has been dead in a ditch more than once. Yet Morgan, through his social media presence and role as host on Talk TV has relaunched himself a dozen times. Today, he has never been more powerful or influential. As absurd as it sounds, his interview with Cristiano Ronaldo 12 months ago initiated a shift in football’s world order as it was the first act of an exodus of football stars to Saudi Arabia, a market never considered a rival by the European football establishment. It also exposed the rot at the centre of Manchester United.

Today, Morgan's platform is tackling the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in a way Fleet Street never could, with guests such as Bassem Youssef, Jeremy Corbyn and, well ... alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate. Morgan clearly cares little for how often he might get owned in his interviews, choosing to focus only on how many are watching. In doing so, he has positioned himself as an influential actor in the world’s most pressing crisis.

Last week, Rishi Sunak welcomed back David Cameron, a man who, as prime minister, hand-delivered Brexit to a Britain, thitherto indifferent to the notion, and despite being personally opposed to it. 

Up to that point, Britain was a Champions League club under conservative ownership with a reputation for not sacking their managers. Cameron’s Brexit turned the Tories into Chelsea — four ‘managers’ (prime ministers) in seven years, and countless ‘bad signings’. It’s been Punch and Judy ever since. Sunak, in an effort to stabilise his cabinet in the wake of Suella Braverman’s very public implosion, has brought back Cameron, a self-described “modern, compassionate conservative”. The move has been widely hailed as an act of stately common sense. For the many who resent Cameron for introducing Brexit, his return is a depressing backward step. For the man himself, it is a triumph.

Everyone is at it. 

Donald Trump’s presidency was widely viewed as an embarrassment by all but his most avowed acolytes, yet, if he can avoid prison, he looks ever more likely to return to the White House in January 2025.

Alastair Campbell was vilified by many as a Machiavellian spin doctor partly responsible for Tony Blair’s calamitous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but through his anti-Brexit campaigning and an unexpected pivot, becoming a podcast host opposite the equally adept shape-shifter Rory Stewart, he has reinvented himself as a plain-speaking voice of reason in troubled times. Blair, incidentally, has been touted as a potential panacea to the current Middle East crisis as — wait for it — an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu!

With second acts never more popular across the water, why are we so averse to them in Ireland? 

The recent passing of businessman Ben Dunne reminded us all what a charismatic chameleon he was, surviving scandals of the most salacious nature, only to constantly reinvent. 

Dunne remains the exception rather than the rule, however. Successive taoisigh have all but disappeared into the ether.

Bertie teased a comeback of sorts with his Good Friday Agreement anniversary podcast but has been largely quiet. Enda Kenny did a TV show about trains. Not exactly storming the capital, is it?

Neither endured scandals akin to Charles Stewart Parnell, the Uncrowned King of Ireland, but perhaps the shadow of CSP’s speedy demise has lingered on long enough to warn against any attempted comeback.

Even poor aul’ Tubs had to head to England to get a job, and all he did wrong was get overpaid. It must be something in our post-colonial, lapsed Catholic psyche — you can mess up once and we might even forgive you, but please just disappear after.

If we are getting a little better at forgiving, forgetting is another matter entirely: Just ask Mary Lou and Sinn Féin; the late Martin McGuinness and his presidential bid; Noel Browne; Kevin Myers.

’Tis a great little nation, as the bank manager said to Charlie Haughey, but, while we are often much too willing to turn a blind eye, once presented with uncomfortable evidence of transgression of any sort, our memories become long and laden with virtue.

Perhaps, Fitzgerald initially wrote: “I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives — but that was just the Irish in me talking.”