Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, is working on a series in which unknown City professionals who have been sacked are filmed taking up new careers elsewhere. The company is advertising discreetly on websites read by City folk for “people who want to challenge themselves in a different way, embrace new opportunities and use their skills in an arena they may not have previously considered”.

The show would go out on a “major broadcaster”. Questioned further, an Endemol man clams up. “It's in development. It's not been officially commissioned.” This apparently means, under the TV code of omerta, that no one can say anything. I deduce from this that Endemol will take a view on those applicants who put themselves forward. If a sufficient number of freaks, weirdos, egomaniacs, show-offs, the socially disfunctional and the sexually challenged are prepared to take part, the show will go ahead. Sorry, “be green-lighted”.

Goldman Sachs owns about a third of Endemol. Surely sufficient numbers of such people could have been sourced in-house?

Quest for oldest banks sparks online debate

Mint, the financial software site, has tried to provide a definitive list of the five oldest banks. It is an invariable rule, as I know to my cost, that on matters historical there is always someone out there who knows more than you. Mint goes for Bank of New York, now Bank of New York Mellon, founded in 1784; Bank of Scotland, now HBOS, 1695; C Hoare & Co, 1672; Berenberg Bank of Hamburg, 1590; and Renaissance Italy's Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, 1472, the oldest.

How about, the website's readers say, Royal Bank of Scotland, 1727? The Bank of England, obviously, 1694? The Swedish Riksbank, 1668? The delightfully named Fugger banking dynasty, from Habsburg times?

Someone even dug up a bank founded in Persia almost two thousand years ago, although no one seems to know whether it is still around or what it was called.

I knew it was a good idea, and so it proved

Amazing, the power of the press. Only yesterday I suggested that Nomura, which acquired large chunks of Lehman Brothers, should replace the crashed American bank as sponsor of the Varsity match. Within hours arrives the announcement that it will be doing just that, both the men's and the women's events. Very good move. “Definitely one-nil to you,” says someone at the bank, apparently confusing their sports.

— These are challenging times for the banks, and there is a need for an entirely new approach to borrowing, especially when it comes to our endangered small businesses. So congratulations to the NatWest, which has issued a guide to its business clients. It sets out a range of available services and suggests a visit to your local branch manager.

Alternatively, there is a free helpline. This puts you through to Ladbrokes. Yes, I can see how that might be helpful, in the last resort at least. Ladbrokes resignedly directs me to the right number and doesn't even try to interest me in the 3.30 at Uttoxeter. NatWest tells me the leaflet I am using is out of date and it is keen to find out how it got back into circulation. “The error would have since been rectified.”

— A City friend's ten-year-old loses a tooth. His mother forgets to put the necessary offering under the pillow. The boy is well up with events. “The Tooth Fairy must have been affected by the credit crunch. Perhaps she had all her savings frozen in a bank in Iceland.”

Apology? You must be mad!

In the blue corner: Jim Cramer

People have been asking for years whether Jim Cramer has gone too far this time. The presenter of CNBC's Mad Money is famous for his on-screen rants. One, about Ben Bernanke — “He's no idea how bad it is out there. He's no idea. He's no idea” — is one of the most-watched financial clips on YouTube, with almost 1.8 million hits.

Cramer, a former hedge fund manager, apparently models his on-screen persona on Howard Beale, the newsreader played by Peter Finch in the film Network — catchphrase “I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more”. He has infuriated the new chairman of AIG, the stricken insurer, by calling on his audience to hound AIG staff “in the supermarket, in the ballpark, everywhere they are”.

Edward Liddy points out that his people have suffered more than most from job losses and the collapsed AIG share price, and demands an apology. On Cramer's past form, he isn't going to get one.

Do you have a diary story? city.diary@thetimes.co.uk

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