"Money don't make the world go round. I'm reaching out for the higher ground" sang the poet and philosopher Des'ree on her 1995 track Crazy Maze, as memorably recounted by David Brent.
And it's a lesson that Tony Blair would have done well to heed when he left the office of Prime Minister in June 2007, handing over the reigns of power to his Chancellor Gordon Brown.
After 10 years of leading the country, with the last twelve months very obviously dedicated to the question of his 'legacy' and a desire to be seen and remembered as the successful politican he was, the question that must have gone through his head was: "what now?"
The answer was clearly: make as much money as humanely possible.
Almost immediately after leaving office, he took on an advisory role with investment bank JPMorgan Chase, while also being employed by Zurich Financial Services on climate change. His fee for this taxing job? It's believed to be a cool half a million a year.
Since then, via his two companies Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures, his personal wealth has been the subject of intense scrutiny and no one is actually exactly sure how much he's worth. But people have a few ideas and it's definitely a hell of a lot.
The brilliantly-titled Channel 5 documentary The Blair Rich Project, which ran in June this year, suggested that he could be worth as much as £100m, including £27m worth of property.
A detailed Telegraph analysis in June 2015 put the figure at £60m. In response to the £100m claim, Blair himself has said, "I'm not worth that, a half of that, a third of that, a quarter of that, a fifth of that and I could go on". For someone given the moniker 'Bliar' after his Iraq War claims, perhaps they have a point, as we'd be willing to bet several houses that he is worth at least £20m.
All of this, of course, precedes today's hints in an interview with Esquire magazine that he might return to politics.
“I don’t know if there’s a role for me ... There’s a limit to what I want to say about my own position at this moment,” he said.
“All I can say is that this is where politics is at. Do I feel strongly about it? Yes, I do. Am I very motivated by that? Yes. Where do I go from here? What exactly do I do? That’s an open question."
It's easy to see the appeal of a return to frontline politics. No longer remembered - in the UK at least - as Labour's most electorally successful leader ever, and the man who won three elections and chose the time of his own departure - his legacy, which he was so keen on, now stands as the man damned by The Chilcot Report, and a greedy gun-for-hire, giving advice to discredited international regimes and laughably holding a role as a Middle East peace envoy.
He's not too old - he's 63 - and, with Jeremy Corbyn's re-election as Labour leader, there's a giant hole in the middle of UK politics which he would be ideally placed to exploit - either with Labour or with a new centre ground party.
Riding back into town one last time, to take on the evil Tories to save the day and rescue his destroyed reputation? The ultimate comeback kid?
The cash clearly hasn't made him happy. Could a return to power do the trick? It might just prove too much to resist.
