Ten years ago, anyone without a job could get a mortgage in the US. Tony Blair was the UK’s lame duck prime minister. Al–Qaeda, rather than IS, was Public Enemy Number One. And the satire film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was in cinemas.

The movie made quite the splash. Despite showing only on around 800 screens in the US – a typical wide release plays on three times as many screens – Borat hit number one on its opening weekend. Its earnings were every bit as strong around the rest of the world and it is widely considered the highest-grossing mockumentary of all time.

My relationship with Borat began before he made the leap to the big screen. While I was working for the British Council in Kazakhstan as a public relations manager in the early 2000s, I read in the newspaper about a Kazakh character on a British TV show. I asked a colleague if she knew who he was – she was a volunteer from the UK, who helped me every month to proofread our newsletter. She felt a bit embarrassed about it and explained that it was an actor pretending to be a Kazakh journalist, and that the show exemplifies a special British sense of humour, which perhaps her Kazakh friends wouldn’t get. I shrugged.