From our special Economics Correspondent: Leslie Robins
In these days of financial turmoil we have to get expert advice wherever we can, and so I jumped at the chance of an interview with the distinguished Italian economist Doctor Molto Allegretto, who lives in Rome but happens to be in London looking for spare parts for his 1935 Qualcast lawn mower.
I caught up with him at a rather seedy hotel in Bayswater where the following conversation took place:
L.R: How do you do, Dr Allegretto – or may I call you Molto?
Dr A: But of course, old bean! Top-hole to see you. (It turns out that Dr Allegretto learnt his English by reading P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster stories.)
L.R: I’d like your thoughts on the economic downturn.
Dr A: I think it’s a turn-up for the books. Aha, I make the English joke!
L.R. Very droll. But seriously, about the recession…
Dr A: Ah, the recession! Now this Mr Brown of yours, I hear he has been studying the works of your great poet and economist Milton Keynes, and he will soon realise that the answer to the credit crunch is – a Super-crunch!
L.R: I don’t quite follow...
Dr A: First of all, the government must confiscate all debit and credit cards.
L.R: All of them? But I’m told that if they were laid end to end they would stretch from here to Vladivostok.
Dr A: And whose stupid idea was it to lay them end to end? If you put them in a pile you could get them all into a car-breaker’s yard I know near Neasden and in 20 minutes they would be crushed to smitheroons.
L.R: But how would that help? We wouldn’t be able to buy anything.
Dr A: You’d have to use cash.
L.R: Cash? But it’s gone out of fashion! Hardly anyone’s got any.
Dr A: So? You wouldn’t spend so much – no more toxic plastic debt!
L.R: You’re surely not suggesting, my dear Molto, that we live within our means!
Dr A: That’s it, old fruit. Absolutely! Tickety-boo!
L.R: It’s an idea that won’t go down very well I’m afraid with the Man on the Clapham Omnibus...
Dr A: Where is this man? Let me explain to him!
L.R. Just a figure of speech, Molto old sport. But anyway I’ll see if I can get a report of this interview published in The Lee Newsletter. It’s a very influential journal nowadays and you could be as famous as Robert Peston overnight.
Dr A: Spiffing!
After that we took a stroll round West London and at a scrap metal yard in Kilburn we were lucky enough to come across a cutting cylinder for a 1935 Qualcast mower, nearly new. Dr Allegretto was overjoyed. But I noticed that he paid for it with his American Express card.