Treading carefully

The problem with this wretched crisis is that it infects even TV. There I was on Sunday night, trying to enjoy some soothing, mellow quality time with dear Stephen Fry — or ‘Steve’ as he now styles himself in his six-part travelogue Stephen Fry in America (BBC1) — and the whole experience was filtered through a prism of economic misery.

At one point he trundled in his black cab to the vast, ugly hotel where the Bretton Woods trade and monetary system was agreed in 1944. ‘Eek!’ I went. ‘That was designed to stop the second Great Depression like the one we’re about to have now!’ But even the bits which must have seemed so innocuous when he filmed them earlier this year were suddenly filled with foreboding.

A jolly outing with Maine lobster fishermen: yeah, but who’s going to be able to afford their catch for the next 20 years? A visit to a gorgeously sumptuous Adirondacks log cabin built in the 19th-century American millionaire vernacular: God, how distant seem the days when America had a future! A trip to an Atlantic City casino: ah, yes, losing money, lots of money, and having your life completely ruined — that sounds familiar.