Last week I visited my fabulously expensive dental hygienist whose surgery is next door to an even more fabulously expensive prep school. It was 8.15 in the morning and big cars were drawing up to deposit little girls. As I looked, I noticed something odd. Last time I passed this school, six months earlier, all the cars were driven by women with flashy handbags and smart hair. But last Monday three cars had men in casual clothes at the wheel.

Could it be, I wondered, that unemployed bankers are responding to the national wave of unpopularity by trying to make themselves a bit more popular at home?