Cocksure: Corliss surveys his nemesis, the Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland

Dreams can come true, sang Gabrielle. But sometimes they probably shouldn’t.

Take Jeb Corliss. He dreams of throwing himself down a 14,692ft mountain, from 2,000ft above that, wearing nothing but a “wingsuit” (a sky-diving suit with flaps), his face 10ft from becoming paté, at 180mph. Should he do it? Of course not. But it’s his dream to ­almost die in that particular way, so that’s that.

Jeb does something called “wingsuit proximity flying”, which is essentially falling with an added left-right ­option. And the mountain he wants to almost die down the side of most is the ­Matterhorn in Switzerland.

It’s a thrilling set-up as we see his past exploits – look! Someone almost dying! A lot! At speed! – but it also boasts an interesting twist. Jeb Corliss is a very, very ­annoying man.

In part, this could be due to his almost-funny condition of “counter phobia” – which means he’s afraid of nothing, and has an almost pathological desire to ­confront fear. But mostly it’s just because he’s a tit. Here he is on worrying his mother half to death: “I love making her nervous. Ha ha! I get a sick joy out of it!”

Ha ha, yeah, amazing! And if you don’t want to punch him at that point (quick aside: would he find this ­exciting? Damn), you ­certainly will at his every cocksure, self-obsessed utterance, affecting the humble tone of a priest casting out evil spirits.

It does kind of make him hard to root for. Most of the time I was cheering for the mountain. In fact, the only time he does seem nervous

is when he almost gets sent to prison after a foiled ­attempt to almost die down the side of the Empire State Building. “I’m a human ­being like everyone else,” he says modestly. “This is ­actually more hardcore than I expected.”

You see – he has found something he’s afraid of after all. Jail. Maybe he could just start committing minor ­offences – shoplifting, say – for an even bigger adrenaline high? It could be his dream.