Every working day since the crisis struck, George Provo-poulos, the silver-haired governor of Greece’s central bank, summoned a small “emergency team” of aides to his offices at 6pm to review the health of the nation’s banks. What he was told on June 15 2012 was enough to make the courtly central banker blanch.

It was the Friday before a parliamentary election – the second national vote in as many months – and the country appeared to be edging towards panic. On that day, Greeks withdrew more than €3bn from their bank accounts, or about 1.5 per cent of the country’s entire economic output. The Bank of Greece had watched people moving money from their banks to their mattresses for nearly three years, but never on such a scale.

“In a matter of a few days, a full-blown banking crisis could have erupted,” Mr Provopoulos said in an interview. At that rate, Greece would run out of bank notes in a day or two.