Bankers show there’s no class in cash, Kielty

The benighted bankers of HBOS, carpeted in the News Of The World for living high on the champagne hog while homeowners sweat, are proof that money can’t buy class. Not only did they have the bewilderingly popular Patrick Kielty as ‘entertainment’, the wretched masses were seen ‘kicking off their £300 Christian Louboutin high heels to dance around expensive handbags’, all while sloshing free booze across the dance floor. Oh dear, oh dear – it’s like a night at the local Ritzy, but without the aspiration or charm.

To top it all off, the drunken hordes were ‘ferried back to their hotels by coach’. Where are the sleek limousines, the platinum-lined omnibus? These people are a poor example to those really wishing to live the high life.

If this is the best they can do off the taxpayer’s dime, then they ain’t worth worrying about…

Save Godfrey Palmer, impressionist of Howard from the Halifax

Spare a thought for poor Godfrey Palmer, lookalike of recently redundised Howard from the Halifax ads, whose fortunes may well have taken another bashing with the purchase of Halifax Bank Of Scotland by Lloyds TSB – a process that will likely subsume the brand of the former into the latter. Spare a thought too for the removal of a lucrative showbiz academy for average Halifax staff up and down the country, not to mention the loss of many of their jobs. The real kicker is that standard rules of competition had to be set aside for this ‘merger’ to happen. So, the US gets two new deposit banks – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, transformed from investment status – and we lose one. Hardly fair, especially for poor Godfrey. Perhaps he should head Stateside?