After the City: Down with the BBC and rent-a-quote bankers

I think it was the sound of wood being sawn that made me take notice! I was listening to Radio 4's Today programme in the car, when the sawing was used as a sound effect to start an item on 'the jobs fall-out in the City'.

Expectantly, I listened for my own voice to come on, as I had recently given an interview to a BBC journalist on this very subject. Thankfully, it didn't.

I took a call from the Beeb when I was in France, sorting out my plans to leave London to go and live there.

A friend had given them my mobile number thinking I would relish the exposure, though I'm not entirely sure why she thought I would enjoy discussing my redundant and jobless status (actually retired!).

Even in work I was never keen on giving interviews to the media. Like most of us, I hate the sound of my recorded voice and - worse - invitations to go on the telly to talk about the markets were something I avoided like the plague.

Thankfully they didn't come too often as there is a cabal of specialists in most fields who are only too happy to play rent-an-opinion on their specialist topic.

I once had one such working for me in my team. He was Japanese and he augmented his job as a regular salesman with almost daily appearances on various business shows as a 'strategist'.

If some big news had emerged overnight from Japan, he would frequently spend the morning being limo-ed from one TV studio to the next.

Often, if I had cause to find him and he wasn't about, it was sufficient simply to look up at the bank of TV screens in the dealing room - chances were I'd find him on one of them.

No dress down Fridays for him - he was fo ever 'suited and booted' in case the cameras should summon him and send him scuttling off to his next appointment.

My colleagues assured me (though I never checked) that he even kept TV make-up in his desk drawer!

Anyway, somewhat reluctantly and definitely without the verve of my former colleague, I agreed to meet the nice-sounding young reporter on my return to London from France the following day.

He duly turned up and after some small talk we got down to the nitty gritty - though not before he had assured me he was 'off topic' on this one and didn't have the first idea of, much less interest in, what went on in the City.

His line of questioning was straightforward at first and my line of answers was similarly standard. Why were people losing their jobs? How would consolidation among the big banks actually happen? How long would it continue? What would signal the bottom, etc?

He asked about me, my team and the fate of my erstwhile employer. Again, I was frank, matter-of-fact and, I suspect, not desperately exciting.

So much for that - then the tape recorder came out. Whilst my new chum was pulling out his kit, which seemed only to consist of a very, very tiny mini-disc player and a very, very large fluffy mike, and whilst I was trying to do something with the dog, which was making an inconvenient amount of noise, we slipped back into small talk.

Why had I been in France? Was I really going to go and live there? Was I selling my house? What was the housing market like in London?

Not spotting a banana skin being planted at my feet, I happily chatted away in an off-the-record sort of manner, including my not unrealistic judgement that one of the reasons we wanted to sell sooner rather than later was that the 'fall-out in the City' was likely to take its toll on the housing market and that the leafy lanes of southwest London may yet be besmirched with a less than beautiful array of estate agents' boards.

So to the real thing. The questions started more or less as in the practice session, but swiftly changed tack to some sharp questions about my own circumstances and potentially those of my friends and neighbours.

Gone was the slightly disingenuous 'I don't know anything about my topic' feel. Here we had a man looking for a story and what's more a story that was not about we poor old City folk having a hard time, but one tinged with schadenfreude along the lines of 'Ha, ha they don't have jobs any more and they're all having to sell their houses'.

I think he sensed that I was suddenly at a loss for words and that my reluctant but perfectly polite welcome to him had turned into something rather less than gruntled.

The icing on the cake came when he'd turned his mini-disc player off. 'Now we just need some bacground sound effects,' he said.

Thinking back to my efforts to get rid of the dog, I had rather been of the impression that this was the last thing he wanted.

'I would like to record the sound of you packing,' came next. Packing? I'd only just got back. 'No, moving!' How on earth do you record the sound of moving house?

That was it, I'd had enough, and I told him so as gently but firmly I moved him in the direction of the door.

So it was that the sound of sawing caught my attention. Sure enough, the poor chap at the other end of the mike - an out of work City high flyer (or at least portrayed as such) - has nothing better to do these days than a spot of DIY around the home, while he waits forlornly for the phone to ring.

I bet he didn't expect the interview to go that way either.

candiapeterson@hotmail.com