Should Boris Johnson really be telling Canada how to build houses?

My eye was caught by a passage of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement last week that other pundits, intent on analysing tax impacts, largely skipped past. As part of ‘progressing further capital market reforms to boost the attractiveness of our markets and the UK as one of the most attractive places to start, grow and list a company’, said Jeremy Hunt, ‘I will explore options for a Natwest retail share offer… It’s time to get Sid investing again.’

Leaving aside the non sequitur that battered NatWest, formerly RBS, still 39 per cent owned by the taxpayer 15 years after its bailout, hardly counts as a start-up with growth prospects, how many of Hunt’s wider audience got the reference to Sid, who he was and why he stopped investing? The answer is that he was a brilliant invention of the advertising agency Young & Rubicam, whose slogan ‘Tell Sid’ helped attract 4.5 million retail applicants for the 1986 privatisation sale of shares in British Gas.