Formula One, as everyone knows, is in trouble. Schumacher wins it all the time. Jaguar is walking away in a huff because he won't give them the ball to play with. Jordan is mired in so much trouble that even the irrepressible Eddie Jordan came down with a dose of the glums at the Japanese Grand Prix, moaning to all and sundry that the end is nigh for all privateers.
Yes, F1 is in trouble. It needs rescuing. Who you gonna call?
Flavio Briatore. Well, you didn't really expect Ghostbusters, did you?
No, Flavio is the answer, or at least an answer, for, in an age when Formula One is about as light-hearted as an Ingmar Bergman movie, Flavio Briatore is Casino Royale.
At a time when Ron Dennis patrols the pitlane like a second World War tank commander and speaks in tongues about optimising potentials and the potential for optimisation, Briatore is old school F1, breezing through the paddock laughing, joking, slapping you on the back, robbing you blind, stealing your girlfriend and making you feel like you'd got the best of the deal.
Think about it. Here's a guy who runs a major player on the grid, Renault, yet has time to nip off to the Venice film festival for a dinner à deux with Hollywood uber-celeb Nicole Kidman. Here's a guy who went out with supermodel Heidi Klum and then decided "Nah" when she was pregnant with his child.
Here's a guy whose sideline from F1 is to run a night club on Sardinia's star-studded Costa Smerelda called The Billionaire's Club, where a Coke will set you back the best part of $50.
Flavio Briatore is Formula One. Old school.
Here's an example. Go to Flavio's website (he has his own) and mull over his feelings on motor sport's top echelon: "Formula One is not just about sport and technology. What attracts people is the glamour, the lifestyle, the drama."
And Briatore knows about all three. When he's not busy hanging out in his exceptionally pricey night club, he's offering like-minded obscenely rich people the use of his house in Kenya - the monstrous house "Lion in the Sun" is near the city of Malindi, on the beach and beside a 100 km marine park. Naturally, it therefore requires its own boat Kaliffa, specially constructed to give visitors a fun time and their chequebooks a heart attack. All very chic, and all very Casino Royale.
His past, similarly, has something of the man of mystery about it. All that will be confirmed by the CV from his spin doctors is: he's Italian, rich, somehow involved in Formula One. And that's it.
The truth is that Briatore began his career as far removed from F1 as it is to get. From Cuneo in northern Italy, Briatore grew up in the mountains and worked as a ski instructor (very F1 - ask Jacques Villenueve's manager Craig Pollock) and in the restaurant trade.
Also in true Formula One style, Flavio has trotted out numerous tall tales designed to impress, such as how he served in the French Foreign Legion and how he did some rally driving in his younger days.
What is true is that during the early 1970s he met Luciano Benetton and after striking up a friendship found himself heading up the fashion company's rapid expansion via franchise in the US. Initial success was followed by tough times and Briatore sought a new challenge. He attended several grands prix and despite professing no interest in the sport, he was appointed commercial director at Benetton, and in double quick time ousted the management and took over himself.
He has barely looked back since, even sailing through the period after 1997 when he was sacked and replaced by now-BAR boss David Richards. Since then he has established himself as a player in all sorts of arenas, not least in that of model squiring, with the suave Italian being linked with Eva Herzegovina, Adriana Volpe, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, the mother of his child.
In Formula One, too, Briatore is a force to be reckoned with. In 1996 he bought Minardi, attempted to sell the struggling team to British American Tobacco, failed when they bought Tyrrell to start BAR, and promptly sold the team to his partners Gabriele Rumi and Giancarlo Minardi.
Not content, when Renault exited the sport at the end of 1997, Briatore bought the old engines from the company that built them, Mechachrome, and marketed them as Supertec units which he sold to Williams and BAR while the pair waited for BMW and Honda power respectively. Briatore made a fortune.
Then he was reappointed to Benetton and oversaw its transition to Renault, where he now presides. But still he's not content. The latest rumours have him buying Cosworth in an emulation of the Mechachrome/Supertec deal so he can sell the power plants to Jordan and Minardi.
Briatore is also the paddock's contractor-in-chief and has controlled (and has control of) some of the paddock's biggest stars. He guided Giancarlo Fisichella into F1, got the Italian $8 million a year at Benetton before they fell out and Fisi ended up at Jordan for a fraction of that sum. The Roman is now on his way back to work with Briatore at Renault in place of another protégé, Jarno Trulli, whom Briatore also guided through the ranks before a spectacular rift this year. Fernando Alonso is under contract to the Renault boss, as is Mark Webber.
And in between all this frantic Formula One activity Briatore still has time to take his yacht Lady in Blue around the Med for a stop at the Billionaire's Club or head off for a date at the Venice film festival with one of the world's most famous actresses.
If only he could drive a racing car, we'd be back in Formula One heaven, watching a driver with a film star girlfriend, a devil may care attitude and healthy appreciation for the finer things in life.
Instead we have 22-year-old geeks, who would rather live in Milton Keynes than Monaco, who would be happier with a Playstation than a Playboy bunny.
It's my suggestion that on Sunday mornings at grands prix, instead of having a driver's briefing, the pilots would get "A Morning with Flavio", in which the team boss would explain, in his wonderfully mangled English, exactly why driving a Formula One car is a little bit like making love to a beautiful woman.