To my astonishment, the tsunami that swept through the global financial markets last week actually affected one of my neighbours. When the credit crunch extends as far as Acton, you know Gordon Brown’s in trouble. It turns out the man in question was an employee of Lehman Brothers. He’d managed to secure a job there after being laid off by Bear Stearns — which must make him one of the unluckiest men in London. When he told me this I immediately suggested he write a piece about this unfortunate coincidence for one of the broadsheets, but he declined on the grounds that it might deter anyone else from employing him. He doesn’t want to become a talisman for impending financial catastrophe — though, for what it’s worth, he’s sent his CV to Goldman Sachs. I told him he had nothing to worry about. He’s unlikely ever to work again.
Strange as it may seem, I found myself in a position to offer this investment banker some career advice. After over two decades in journalism, I’ve become an expert on being fired. I now know exactly what to say when someone asks what happened at your previous place of employment.
I learnt this lesson the hard way after being fired from the Times. It was my first job out of university, back in 1986. The editor back then was Charlie Wilson, something of a Fleet Street legend, and I spent the first five minutes of every morning trying to log on to the office computer system as him. You were supposed to enter your own name and password as soon as you sat down, but how much access you got to the internal network was dictated by your status in the office hierarchy and, as a humble news trainee, I had virtually none.
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