If we are to believe Tourism Queensland, the best job in the world does not belong to the chief taster at Moët & Chandon, or to Sir Richard Branson’s housekeeper on Necker Ireland, or to Kate Moss’ executive chef, but to the Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

And it seems a great many people agree, given that the post, which apparently involves being paid £75,000 for doing not much more than feeding turtles, picking up the island’s post, and living rent-free in a three-bed ocean-front villa for six months, attracted some 35,000 applications when it was advertised a few weeks ago. But I wouldn’t do it if you paid me.

Why? Well, leaving aside that the “job” is based in Oz (I should be careful here as a number of my valued colleagues are Australian, my ultimate boss is from that neck of the woods, and God Himself is most probably Australian too, but, let’s face it, Australia’s a bit dull, isn’t it?), and that Tourism Queensland wouldn’t pay me to do it, since I do not have the specified “good swimming skills and enthusiasm for snorkelling and/or diving” (I can’t swim) or necessary wackiness (you can watch the 16 shortlisted candidates degrading themselves in various ways at islandreefjob.com), “the best job in the world” does not pass the three basic tests of job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction, is, of course, a complex thing. It is quite possible to have a "dream" job and be unhappy, or to be in a rubbish job and be chuffed, and paradoxically, your professional satisfaction depends to a great degree on what is going outside your professional life.

Meanwhile, the army of people employed to study employment have produced all sorts of odd and ultimately unhelpful research — revealing in recent years that low-paid workers are apparently happier than the higher paid, that hairdressers are happiest of all British workers, that Welsh workers are happier than the English or Scottish, that the clergy are the happiest of professionals in the US, that the self-employed are happiest everywhere, that corporate lawyers are hugely unhappy, that those who work very long hours are actually very happy, that job satisfaction fluctuates hugely over the course of careers, that job satisfaction fluctuates even during the course of the average working day, and that the things make people happy at work are good pay, decent hours and promotion prospects.

But to generalise unscientifically from personal experience, and from decades of listening to friends whine about their work, I would say the best jobs are simply that those where (i) you are allowed to develop; (ii) you respect and like your colleagues and they respect and like you back; and (iii) you can measure your performance in some way. And in these three basic respects, the so-called “best job in the world” is no such thing.

The contract, for instance, is just six months long, meaning that there’s no room for development or progression: you’ll be back serving kebabs in Walsall before you know it. The short-term nature of the contract also increases the risk that your colleagues will be indifferent to you — what’s the point of ferrying cups of coffee to someone who will disappear so quickly? — or resent you for swanning around while they spend long days tinkering with Microsoft spreadsheets. And most problematically, it’s hard to see how performance can be measured in a post where the responsibilities are so confused.

Indeed, the “best job in the world” exhibits the most salient quality of all truly crappy jobs: the employer doesn’t seem to know what he wants.

On the one hand, Tourism Queensland is marketing the post as an opportunity to doss around for six months, handling the whole thing as a vacuous PR stunt. This is evidenced by the fact that it was recently cited in a “list of top 50 public relations stunts in the world,” as compiled by public relations company Taylor Herring, and by the fact that the Tourism Queensland marketing executive director Steve McRoberts has described it publicly as a “campaign” rather than job application. (As if this admission of media manipulation wasn’t crass enough, McRoberts added that the publicity around the “job” has “given people a bit of hope” amid the economic gloom.

If having a one in 35,000 chance of getting a six-month position is what counts as hope these days, then we may as well sidle up to the nearest Mexican pig and end it all now).

But when you look at the small print on the website, a different story emerges. It informs applicants, for instance, that the job will also involve giving “ongoing media interviews”. And while celebrities often get criticised if they complain about being interviewed, they have a point: answering journalists’ question is often repetitive, invasive, and difficult.

The small print also states that “demonstrating motivation and a genuine enthusiasm is vital . . . We need someone who can sustain worldwide interest for six months”. As a former customer-facing employee of Burger King, who was required to remain cheerful for whole mornings and afternoons at a time, I can report that remaining upbeat for six hours, let alone six months, is impossible. The first and foremost pleasure of any job is to be able to moan, and being denied it just gives you more reason to moan.

Then you have the information that the successful applicant, who will be presented to the world in eight days’ time, will be “required to report back on adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates”, and that “on offer is a unique opportunity to help promote the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef”.

What this ultimately comes down to is that you will be working quite hard as a PR executive for six months. All very well, but hardly the equivalent of being employed as George Clooney’s chief pant-holder.

- The Boy With The Topknot: a Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, by Sathnam Sanghera is published in paperback this week

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