I staggered to my feet, squinting at the Scandinavian monster that had turned on me and noted the irony that I had created this aggressor with my own hands. To add insult to injury, I also had the least masculine black eye of all time.

I’m not the first inadvertent architect of my own downfall. Famous historical examples and tales include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Sunderland manager Peter Reid’s panic signing of Tore Andre Flo in 2002, marking the beginning of the end of his reign.

Tragic real-life examples include Marie Curie discovering radiation, which would later poison her, and – more recently – the owner of the firm that makes the Segway being killed when one of his own contraptions lost control and drove off a cliff.

Such stories may or may not have been at the back of Thomas Cook’s mind when last week it followed Tui in terminating its distribution agreement to sell Jet2holidays products in its shops.

Jet2holidays has muscled its way into the top three tour operators in recent years. It dominates the northern market and is becoming a serious competitive threat to Thomas Cook and Tui in the south.

To illustrate the point, take a look at the Atol passenger authorisations over recent years.

Jet2holidays held a licence to sell 1.1 million package holidays in 2014.

Today, that licence has more than doubled to a shade under 2.3 million.

In contrast, Cook’s authorisations over the same period fell from 3.7 million to 2.5 million passengers.

These are only authorisations, so they don’t necessarily reflect actual passengers carried, but they do reveal a lot about the ambitions of those companies.

You could certainly see why Cook would no longer want to promote the products of its rival, particularly given the cautious outlook it communicated to the stock market last Thursday.

Last year, around a third of Jet2holidays’ package sales were distributed by high street agents.

According to the Leeds-based operator’s management, most of these third-party sales were via independent agents and consortia – but the combined loss of the Thomas Cook and Thomson distribution channels is sure to leave a dent.

Jet2holidays will need further support from independent agents as well as an increase in direct customers to make up the shortfall.

Generating growth hasn’t been a problem for the operator over the past three years, but the lesson of Frankenstein and my own building exploits is the danger of hubris and what might happen when we overstretch our capabilities.

Luckily for Jet2holidays, while it might have new planes to fill, the ambition it has shown so far shows its sizeable growth is likely to remain both sustainable – and profitable.

Martin Alcock is director of the Travel Trade Consultancy