Although Mr Portillo has never embellished his original confession, he has woven this part of his biography into a tedious narrative of personal self-discovery.
The art of storytelling gets reinvented for every technological revolution, and digital media has exploded with new modalities of narrative and post-narrative forms of self-expression.
The ONS said changes to the guidance may have led to an increased number of narrative verdicts coded as intentional self-harm in 2011, and therefore could have resulted in an increase in the suicide rate.
Each chapter of the glossy, colourful tome starts with a brief, self-described rant from Mr Peters, before moving on to the main narrative (such as it is) which is flanked on every page by sidebars containing quotes or one-point observations.