Volodymyr Zelenskyy was brought up in the grunt town of Kryvyi Rih, a Soviet-looking industrial city in the southeast of Ukraine that served as a centre of iron mining and metallurgy.

He knew about bullies before he left school. To survive among the town’s knife-wielding gangs, you had to have a sense of humour, chutzpah, and a bunch of buddies that had your back.