In the mid-eighties, working in London, I met up with an old friend from university who'd 'gone into the City', to use a phrase which - at that period - was still untarnished and had a certain glamour to it. As I remember, we were eating in one of the newly in-vogue fish restaurants and at the side of every table stood ice buckets with bottles of white Sancerre. We talked about our different paths since Finals; his into banking, mine into publishing. At the end of the meal, when the bill came, he graciously waved away my attempts to pay half. He explained they'd just received their first round of bonuses and intimated an amount that exceeded by a margin what I was earning for the entire year. I didn't press the issue.

Since then, and over the past couple of years especially, I have thought back to that meal. I do not pretend to understand the complex machinery of modern financial institutions but it was clear that even then (c. 1986) merchant banking was pretty much gambling with pinstripes on. It also became evident that although you were pulling in handsome amounts both for the bank and yourself, the money was far from assured. My friend sketched out a world of obligatory 'free' lunches, trips to Henley and the races, which were all thinly disguised occasions for networking and deal-making. There were phone calls, too, with tip-offs and you'd -be-a-fool-to-miss-this-one whispers. And you knew that you had to rise to the bait for fear of offending a useful connection and losing out to the next Big One. Sometimes it would be a scam, others a genuine failure, once in a while you'd hit it lucky - and that would make up (on balance) for the others. And, in any case, the real losers were people like you and me, paying for the losses in the indirect way we all do, like it or not.

So hearing this morning that Bob Diamond has resigned from Barclays and a whole murky world of City finance has started to spill into the clear light of day comes as no great surprise. How can this have gone on for so long? everyone wonders. However, as my friend's initiation into this world revealed, the answer is simple: everyone is in it together. Who has the balls, let alone integrity, to raise an objection? If you were seen not to play the game then you'd be out: no more tip-offs, no more jollies, no more bonuses, and - finally - no more job. Just not the right sort of chap ...