When I heard that James Graham, one of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights, had chosen Fred Goodwin and the Royal Bank of Scotland as the subject of his new satire, Make It Happen, my heart skipped a beat. The story of the rise and fall of the world’s largest bank, combined with characters real and imagined, including the ghost of Adam Smith (played by Succession’s Brian Cox) sounds irresistible. And, apart from a Scottish connection going back to my earliest days in journalism, I’ve long been intrigued by Goodwin, the accountant who led RBS to ruin and Britain to the brink of financial disaster.

In the 17 years since the fall of RBS, Goodwin has been something of a cartoon villain, alternatively cast as a megalomaniac or an introverted control freak. Born and raised in Ferguslie Park, a “sink estate” outside Glasgow, he won a place at Paisley Grammar, a school for upwardly mobile strivers. (Broadcaster and editor Andrew Neil is a fellow alumnus.) As a student, he channelled his competitive energy into pinball. As an adult, his dream was to build the biggest bank in the world. Headquartered in Scotland, naturally.

In the early part of the century, RBS rose to be one of the top 10 global banks. Goodwin was knighted for “services to banking” in 2004. But in September 2008, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, markets went into meltdown, leaving heavily leveraged RBS grievously exposed. The UK government stepped in with a ￡45.5bn rescue plan, in effect nationalising the bank. Goodwin, who thought he had done nothing wrong, was forced to resign and later stripped of his knighthood. These days he spends his time on the golf course or tinkering with vintage cars — a disgraced recluse.