The Best of Alex 1998-2001 - Tapa dura

Alex, the cartoon investment banker who resides on the business pages of the Daily Telegraph, emerges into a new Millennium just as arrogant and unpleasant as he was in the old. The City of London, where he plies his trade, lurches through the full Bust to Boom and Back Again economic cycle: the collapse of Russia and the Far East in 1998; the dotcom bubble; the non-event that was the Y2K bug; the predictable, yet unpredicted, burst of the dotcom bubble; and the reversion to familiar recessionary habits in 2001. Throughout this flux Alex exhibits all his traditional expertise: fabricating expense accounts, freeloading shamelessly at France 98 and the Rugby World Cup while orchestrating manoeuvres to maximise his Christmas bonus and placate his fractious client Mr Hardcastle. His hapless colleague Clive shows his customary absence of commercial acumen by opening a doomed restaurant and selling his soul to the Devil. Together they have to meet some of the challenges of the Twenty First Century: Robin, their infuriatingly computer literate graduate trainee, and the sartorial tyranny of permanent dress down.