With things continuing to get worse, it’s become clear that not only is the government part-nationalising certain TV programmes, it’s also part-nationalising certain TV banks.
And no wonder, what with the finance industry in such a parlous condition. If TV banks, a mainstream primetime once-weekly example to the country, are seen to be tottering, then not even an on-screen intervention from Richard Madeley (“I think we need to all calm down a bit, just calm down, right?”) can save us.
Topping the list of casualties has to be:
1) The one in Joint Account. This is bound to be in trouble, what with it being a product of the 1980s and having John Bird on the books. The latter’s liquid lunches and agreeably distracted manner would have had the firm up against the wall sooner, were it not for Hannah Gordon’s level-headed approach to dividend portfolios and nice dresses.
2) The one off of Dad’s Army, where Captain Mainwaring worked before the inception of the Home Guard. This seemed like a tiny bank even then, where old women came in to make deposits of three pennies a month, and would surely have been taken over by now or been gobbled up by a demutualised building society with someone like Iain Cuthbertson in charge.
3) The one in The Sweeney. Actually, there were two: the National Mercian Bank, which got held up by some “bastards”, and the National Anglian Bank, which was broken into not once but twice. Both of these establishments are surely likely to be barking at the porcelain by now.
4) And, er, that’s it. There must be more who need a bit of a bail-out. Didn’t In Loving Memory have a doddery local branch of some kind? And every single person in every single institution in Capital City must be out on their arse. Although that’s no bad thing.
