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He's a hard man to place is Stephen Carter.
Even by the standards of this Government, where people seem to switch briefs and move between departments with ease, he is going some.
He's got no less than three desks, at Business, Innovation and Skills, at Culture, Media and Sport and in the House of Lords.
He's the UK's communications minister. Before that, he was Gordon Brown's chief of strategy and principal adviser.
His speciality is organisation, in being handed complicated tasks and asked to make sense of them.
He did it, prior to joining the Government, when he was the first head of Ofcom, the new regulator with a broad remit in telecoms, TV and radio.
He did it again yesterday, with the publication of Digital Britain, a policy framework for the communications, technology and media sector.
But while attention is heaped on his report, there is much speculation in the City as to what Carter will do next.
He's indicated his desire to leave the Government next month, and is dropping hints that he would like to return to the private sector.
Certainly, there can be few 45-year-olds with such a compelling CV: head of ad agency J Walter Thompson UK, chief operating officer at cable TV provider NTL, then Ofcom, followed by chief executive of Brunswick, the financial PR agency, and then his stint in Whitehall. And he's a lord to boot.
In the past, before he went to Brunswick, he was spoken of as the next head of ITV.
That job went to Michael Grade and is now vacant again.
There's also chat in some quarters that he could return to his old advertising stamping ground and become chief executive to Sir Martin Sorrell at WPP, the group that owns J Walter Thompson (although there must be doubts about Sorrell's willingness to work with a high-profile chief executive, and one who is a peer, when he is such a dominant force).
While Carter has indicated he will head back to business, rumours persist he could get into bed with David Cameron's Tories and emerge as one of their external kingpins.
All, presumably, will become apparent shortly. But if his recent track record is anything to go by, whatever he chooses to do may not be terribly permanent.
He's carved out a speciality of jumping from big job to big job. Not always with obvious success.
For while his CV looks good, his real achievements in some of the posts held are not so obvious.
He grew up in Edinburgh and went to university in Aberdeen, where he studied law.
Today, he bears no trace of a Scottish accent. Indeed, he was determined to get away from Scotland, heading south to join J Walter Thompson as a trainee specialising in media and technology.
Eight years later, before he was 30, he was in charge of the agency, and his reputation as a wunderkind, with slick presentational skills and a willingness to exact change, was made.
He keeps himself fit by running, and he's passionate about the arts (he is a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company).
He lives in Barnes in a large house with his wife, Anna — a branding consultant — and their two children.
One of his characteristics is enormous self-confidence.
He's not afraid to speak his mind or to appear outside the norm — when he was at trendy JWT, he was the one in a tank top.
Some of those who have dealt with him speak highly, paying tribute to his ability as a multi-tasker.
Others are less sure, saying that while he has spent much of his career in the communications industry he is not a born communicator and is too fond of jargon.
They question, for instance, just how well he would go down with investors at troubled ITV.
At NTL, which was similarly beleaguered, George Blumenthal, the cable operator's co-founder, accused him of adding to its woes, not alleviating them.
When Blumenthal left, he sent an email to staff lambasting “the management consultants, the toothpaste marketers and the other Carterets”.
Carter departed with a pay-off and bonus worth £1.7 million — but not before NTL had filed for bankruptcy protection.
His smart talk cut little ice with shareholders. “All fur coat and no knickers” was one view.
But others point out that Carter faced an impossible task, and praise his attempts to lift a demoralised workforce.
At Ofcom, he was typically unclubbable, not visibly bending in one direction or the other.
Then, at Brunswick, Carter had the grand-sounding title of CEO but, as anyone who knows the PR organisation well, internal clout resided with Alan Parker, its founder and controlling shareholder.
External as well — since Carter was not one of the agency's client and Press-facing rainmakers.
There was some debate as to the nature and success of his role — Brown, it was thought, may have been sold a pup in that the Prime Minister imagined he was hiring a spin guru when, in fact, he was getting a backroom manager.
Within Brunswick, there were rumours of Carter and Parker not getting on, of the latter not being prepared to go along with the former's push for structural change. But Parker pays tribute to his management flair.
However able Carter was, he did not make a smooth transition to Downing Street.
He wasn't the first businessman to find the switch difficult.
One of his first acts was to use cartoons from Gary Larson's The Far Side to illustrate the difficulties facing Labour.
This went down like a lead balloon with the Brown veterans who found Larson's trademark pictures of sombre-looking animals and frenzied patients on psychiatrists' couches deeply insulting.
Carter, they said, forgets a most vital aspect of politics: that all the people who work in it are volunteers.
It didn't help that he wasn't even Labour. He was a Labour activist in his youth but was not regarded as a prominent supporter.
He was touted by the Liberal Democrats as a possible candidate for London Mayor, and he also referred to Cameron as “Dave” and to George Osborne as “George”.
The old guard ganged up on him, claiming he was out of his depth and out of control.
Back-biting ensued, and it wasn't long before Brown moved him to communications minister across two departments. Digital Britain is the fruit of that appointment.
Carter gave a smooth presentation at the Royal Society of Arts yesterday. He is entirely at home with a Powerpoint presentation.
He described the report to the press as “market-facing, market-friendly industrial policy”.
He admitted that after his interim report in January, the message came back from creative industries that “Government expressing an ambition is not enough” - and yet that is exactly the problem with Digital Britain.
Similarly, he talked about “execution”, that delivering on policy, was so important - when the unspoken fact that hung over his grand announcement was that he is about to leave the Government.
There was not one question about why he was quitting. He did give a hint he would not be around for much longer.
Explaining why his report had reached no firm conclusion on top-slicing the licence fee and the need for the BBC Trust to be consulted first, he pointed out Parliament must also approve any decision. “I am [just] the unelected politician here — for now,” he said.
He's unlikely to disappear into the background, but it remains to be seen who will get Stephen Carter next.
Life and times of Stephen Carter
Born: 1964
Education: Currie High School, Edinburgh; Aberdeen University; Harvard Business School
First job: graduate trainee at
J Walter Thompson
Key career moves: chief exec of JWT, 1994; head of NTL in Britain and Ireland, 2000; chief executive, Ofcom, 2003; chief executive of Brunswick; Prime Minister's chief of strategy and principal adviser; communications minister
Hobbies: theatre, running, Chelsea FC
