A pragmatic optimist, sports addict and novice saxo-phone player, Robert Cooper has busied himself in the financial world for nigh on a quarter of a century. Because he knows the wrinkles (both his own and the bank’s), others expect him to be wealthy as well as wise. Not a bit of it. His bank accounts are as chaotic as everyone else’s.

As a bank employee, he was automatically in receipt of bank shares. He realises being a customer, shareholder and employee simultaneously could be said to be a conflict of interest which he ought to point out to the banking world. But won’t.

As a Personal Banker, Simon Whaley spent December flogging credit cards to customers to give them the best Christmas ever, and January trying to convert all those huge credit card bills into unsecured loans (with payment protection and any other insurance he could think of.) He worked in several branches, which enabled him to serve celebrities such as Hayley Mills, Frank Carson and the bloke that played the barman in Only Fools and Horses.

Now a full-time writer, he spends his spare time juggling the few pounds he has in his bank accounts (using insider knowledge gained during his banking career) to try and keep his platinum credit card, without actually having a platinum income to match it.