Instead of schmoozing at City parties, I’m Sarah the Cook in a Yorkshire panto

Last Christmas I offered you a cruel satire about a boardroom big-shot whose career went so awry that he ended up as a pantomime dame. So perhaps there’s justice in the fact that this year, that’s what’s happened to me. Instead of schmoozing the City’s festive party round, I’m cross–dressing nightly on a Yorkshire stage as Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittington and His Cat.

The original Whittington, four times Lord Mayor of London between 1397 and 1419, was a mercer who exported English cloth across the North Sea, importing silks and velvets in return. But in panto, Dick and his crew turn their backs on our European partners and sail in search of new trade deals ‘on stormy seas where rough winds blow/ to the sandy shore of Moroc-co!’ And when the Good Ship Lollipop sinks, there isn’t even time to ad-lib ‘Talk about a hard Brexit…’ before ‘Women and cooks first!’

Of course every panto has a happy ending. British export excellence wins the day when Dick’s faithful cat Tommy exterminates the rats in the palace of the ‘current Sultana’, who gratefully sends us home in a new ship full of treasure. So the moral of the story is never despair — and have faith in the Fairy, who in our case has something of the vicar’s-daughter voice of Theresa May. Will life imitate art and negotiating chaos give way to joy, prosperity and a glorious finale? As the Sultana says in a different context: ‘Don’t go raisin’ your hopes…’

Best and worst

And so to my annual awards. Best business recovery of 2017: Lloyds Banking Group, which returned from the bailout sin-bin to full membership of the private sector in May. The year’s most lamented collapse: the upmarket Swan Hellenic cruise line in January.