This is awkward: I am about to sit down to lunch with a man who has just told me he does not want to eat anything with me.
Nothing personal, you understand. It is just that Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist famed for starting the global microcredit movement, has already eaten when he arrives for Lunch with the FT, an interview whose essential feature over its 20-year history has been the sharing of a meal.
Yunus, who has spent a lifetime fearlessly challenging much bigger social conventions than this, confesses ignorance of the FT’s tradition and seems by his silence disinterested in it. He is a busy man, constantly travelling, and I suspect that somewhere along the way an aide failed to brief him on the proposed nature of our encounter.