The first time I read this newspaper I was 20: I only discovered what stockbrokers actually did a year later. Yet at the age of 23, by some accident, I became an investment analyst for a venerable stockbroking firm called Grieveson Grant, making recommendations to institutional clients about media companies. It was a wonderful job to have 20 years ago. You got to meet captains of industry and learn about how companies and investment work from the masters. But I fear the golden age for analysts is past.

A host of factors have brought the profession down. Regulation has inhibited the more wily, creative and hard-working analysts. Directors of public companies are now highly circumspect about what they say, and never selectively transmit information to individual brokers for fear of prosecution. So finding original ideas and stories has become much harder. Insider dealing only became a criminal offence in 1980. Before that, things were rather more – well, relaxed. I recall being told how a partner at my old firm had bought a chateau with the profits from his personal account dealings in the shares of a single corporate client in the oil sector.