There are some investment ideas that even I consider very, very adventurous - and investing in secondhand venture capital trusts (VCTs) is one of them.

I mention this because I recently spent a very amusing few hours chatting about such matters with Ben Yearsley, Hargreaves Lansdown's investment maestro. As you'd expect from someone at a mainstream independent advice firm and brokerage, equity income funds are a big part of his thinking for the next year. But I was fascinated to discover that Yearsley (personally, as opposed to professionally) is going very long on secondhand VCTs.