WHY I'VE INVITED OLEG TO LUNCH IN MY SHED ...

I have a cunning plan to accelerate the launch of NAB, Napper Assets Banking, and therefore quickly disprove the assertion yesterday by Iran’s gloating leaders that the global financial crisis indicates the end of capitalism.

If scrounging from one of the world’s richest men – Russian aluminium king billionaire Oleg Deripaska – is good enough for Lord (Lord! Pah!) Peter Mandelson and Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne, then it’s good enough for me. Lawyers for those two honorable gentlemen should know, of course, that I mean scrounging lunch – aboard his yacht, moored off Corfu, as you do.

But not this cunning new banker. I have invited Oleg to lunch at Napper Towers. He won’t be able to resist because I have some rare aluminium for his perusal in my old shed. Perhaps we could have lunch in there while we're at it. Give a nice rustic feel, which I'm sure he'd appreciate after all the rigours of extravagant luxury.

That should guarantee a reasonable investment in NAB, allowing me to put in an offer to the majority shareholder – the government acting on our behalf – for the Natwest arm of RBS. On the grounds that my local branch isn’t one of those that now opens on a Saturday.

The latest in a long line of crass Natwest TV adverts shows the two idiots spying on a branch doing business on a Saturday while simultaneously trying to ridicule the sensible one. So I phoned my branch, and despite previous ads that you can now ring YOUR OWN BRANCH and talk to someone of authority at YOUR OWN BRANCH, it took me a very long time to get through to no one in particular. And then they told me, No, there was no chance of them opening on a Saturday.

As the (part) owner of Natwest, I shall now instruct the government to sell it to NAB. Once they have done so, I will have the collateral to start buying banks throughout the world. And every one will be open on Saturday. When I have enough banks, I will buy Iran. Then let them tell the world capitalism is dead.

You can’t kill self-interest (let alone greed). It will die when the world ends.

You know, I should have been a philosopher.