I had only had the bag in my possession for 30 seconds before my first comment. “People will take photos of you with that down the street. Your cat will be famous,” the doorman of the Corinthia hotel assured me after I’d collected the rucksack from the concierge. The night before, it had been Chip’s home for the evening as he walked, or was walked, down the red carpet for the Argylle premiere.
An 18ft Shetland yawl was the goal – the type of sailing boat you take on adventures to islands. But when a pallet stacked with wood and tools arrived at the garage I’d rented near my flat in London, I wondered if I’d taken on too much. It was spring 2018 and I’d just returned from six months in Myanmar, where I’d been making a documentary for Channel 4 on the repression, violence and mass murder carried out by the authorities.