BOOK REVIEW: FIONA REDDANreviews Does Anything Eat Bankers? and 53 other indispensable questions for the credit crunched, by Andy Zaltzman; Old Street Publishing; £6.99 (€8)
TO BE fair, Andy Zaltzman could have chosen better source material when he went to write his first book.
While there might be comedy to be found in the antics of bankers such as Fred Goodwin, Brian Goggin etc, Zaltzman is not the man to do it. His book attempts to offer a satirical view of bankers and the current financial crisis but, unsurprisingly perhaps, falls far short of being funny.
Zaltzman is best known across the water for his Radio 4 comedies The Departmentand Political Animal, and he has also written for several series of Channel 4's Bremner, Bird & Fortune. This connection perhaps explains the glowing review from Rory Bremner (who at least has been known to be funny) plastered on the front of the book, "Economic meltdown has never been funnier".
However, while he may be funny as a broadcaster, Zaltzman's humour fails to translate in this book, and the reader is left wondering why, of all the people involved in publishing the book, no one - not the editor/typesetter/publicist - shouted "stop the press, it isn't funny".
The book sells itself as being "something to cheer us all up", but with redundancies increasing by the day, property prices plunging and the economy in a mess - because of the credit crunch - it is hard to imagine people choosing this book for a bit of escapism.
Humour and business do not natural bedfellows make, but other authors have combined the two much more successfully - Lucy Kellaway's satirical weekly columns detailing the actions of the overambitious, underachieving Martin Lukes in The Financial Timesfor example, or perhaps less intentionally, but still as effectively, Michael Lewis's tale of "Big swinging d***s" in Liar's Poker.
The book follows a QA format, with questions asked by characters such as "Morislav Minovic, 70, duck egg magnate, Prague" and "Kit Carr, 52, road junction designer, Erdinton", and the responses given by the author. However, the responses are the author's stream of consciousness and as such are almost incomprehensible. For example:
"Q: Judging by the way the FTSE Index has being going, buying shares nowadays is like an orange - completely pointless. Is there any reason to own shares any more? Gordon Roadstand, 72, retired stadium critic, Gillingham
"A: Possibly, but it is a risky business and not one you should enter for financial gain. The skittishly temperamental stock markets have been going up and down like the proverbial fiddler's elbow - and this particular fiddler is really letting it rip on an usually vigorous violin version of a throbbing nightclub dance anthem, whilst simultaneously inflating a punctured football with a handpump, repeatedly punching a sleeping beggar, and gradually leaning down to pick up a chocolate bonbon off the floor. All in all, that is a lot of elbow, not a lot of end product, an overall downward trend, and a general feeling of confusion and futility. Welcome to 21st century economics . . . (and so on for another two pages)."
And what of the eponymous question - does anything eat bankers? According to Zaltzman, while traditionally it was assumed that bankers had no "natural predator" recent events have shown evidence of "banks swallowing other banks whole, before spewing them out a short time later, lying on the ground, and whimpering to the government for help".
"The behaviour of bankers has always been baffling, and increasingly has become almost completely alien to us. However, whilst we can find it near impossible to relate to them, the latest scientific research shows that ordinary human beings do in fact share 70 per cent of the same DNA as bankers. We are, it seems, much more closely related than anyone had previously thought."
Zaltzman also offers possible sources of blame for the credit crunch "one of the biggest, silliest and most irresponsible games of all time".
Possible candidates include the ancient Greeks - "things were going fine until they distracted themselves from the serious business of establishing western civilisation by getting naked, oiled up and wrestling boys"; Dan Ackroyd - "only too happy to profit from the markets in fictional 1983 film Trading Placesbut eerily quiet on the subject of impending stock market slumps in the more important real world"; and al Qaeda - "their dastardly deeds left the western world with no choice but to launch a series of financially ruinous wars that destabilised the global economy".
In Zaltzman's defence at least he's come up with someone different to the usual cast of Alan Greenspan and hedge fund managers.
However, the book finally gets funny at the end, when Zaltzman provides a bibliography of suggested further reading, which include the following gems:
In Praise of Corporation Tax - A Collection of Poemsby the staff of PricewaterhouseCoopers, "an outstanding anthology of socially-responsible business verse from legendary accountancy firm. Winner of the 2003 Norman Lamont Memorial Silver Salver for financial poetry.
Dispensing the Indispensable IV - How to Sleep at Night and Other Corporate Guilt-Reducing Adviceby Dr Millicent Strahan, in which the author offers her "latest handy everyday tips on everything from how to justify stratospheric bonuses, how to blithely ignore massive job cuts further down the economic food chain and how to convince yourself that tax is voluntary".
And Capitalism or Tennis?By Warren Buffet and Mats Wilander, in which the billionaire investor and the three-time French Open winner "each put forward reasons why their chosen profession offers the best solutions for a sustainable economic future for the planet".
Now that's one I'd like to read.
