There is sweat across my brow. I feel feverish, nauseous, and dizzy. I’m trapped in a confined space with dim lighting, making it difficult to survey my surroundings. The person seated in front of me is making a pathetic sound — “Urgh . . . ehh . . . urghh . . . argh . . . ” — as though he’s dying. Another sneezes ostentatiously every few minutes, avoiding my murderous gaze. The air is dense with the acrid smell of human piss and shit, worsened by the pungent heat. The space in which I am trapped is packed with every possible assault on the senses, designed to irritate people so intensely, one further annoyance might instigate a full-scale riot.

It’s not a torture chamber, though it might as well be. It’s a Virgin Train — one of the privatized trains owned by billionaire Richard Branson, a man so full of hubris he once started a line of colas with his cartoon image emblazoned on the side; who became known in the 1990s for failed adventure expeditions, including an ill-fated balloon ride. His WiFi service is appalling, one of the worst-rated in the country, but it’s trains where Virgin’s shabbiness comes to the fore.

Virgin Trains were stripped of a franchise recently and blocked from bidding for further contracts. Branson attracted nationwide opprobrium last year for suing the NHS, in a move that seemed designed to cement his place as a pantomime villain of capitalism to rival the top-hatted character that graces Monopoly boards. Each time I board a Virgin Train, I’m enraged to the point that I mull becoming a single-issue voter, the issue being: “Will you put Richard Branson in prison?”