“I hoped there would be return tickets at least – I was a fool!” exclaimed one disappointed man turned away from the Old Market box office.

There was an eagerness for intellectual debate among the diverse crowd hearing popular philosopher Alain de Botton discuss his latest book, The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work.

De Botton suggested that if a Martian attempted to understand human life through visiting a bookshop, it would think we spent most of our time falling in love, with occasional breaks for murder.

Discovering this gap in the publishing market for an assessment of work – how goods get to consumers, our search for meaning and value in what we do, and how attitudes to employment have changed through history – the self-employed writer and thinker went undercover at a variety of workplaces.

As he enthused about the eroticism and time-wasting he observed at a biscuit factory, and his following of a tuna fish’s journey from ocean to plate, his sympathetic yet ironic detachment from those he observed seemed slightly alien.

Captivated by these concepts, his words spilled over each other as he marvelled at human ingenuity and psychology, sparking lightbulb moments and intelligent questions from the audience.