Barings never tried to be anything other than a niche player in that great game of finance of the past few years, the boom in international securities. Warburg, by contrast, had global ambitions.Warburg assumed its status as the City’s standard-bearer 10 years ago in the Big Bang revolution that swept into history the old demarcation lines between merchant bankers, stockbrokers and jobbers. Alone among the City’s merchant banks, Warburg did not hesitate to shell out big money to gobble up one of the most substantial stockbrokers, Rowe & Pitman, along with one of the two biggest jobbers, Akroyd & Smithers. Only Barclays made a similar commitment in its purchase of the other big jobber, Wedd Durlacher, and brokers De Zoete Bevan, to form BZW.

You would have to be less than human to avoid a touch of schadenfreude at the spectacle of City takeover artists – a Warburg speciality – getting a taste of their own medicine from the Swiss Bank Corporation. But this latest foreign invasion of the City should be a matter of concern for us all. First Barings, and now Warburg. The investment banking operations of one of the City’s proudest names seem likely to fall into foreign hands, and you can be sure it will not be the last to do so. I want them to be left to the nation.Erich: Which nation?Joyce: The winning nation, of course.Lots more in this vein All offers to me as soon as possible, please.. Incidentally, if anything should happen to you, what do you want to happen to your scripts?Joyce: I don’t want to make any money out of them. I believe the Fhrer does too.Erich: Hmmm.Joyce: We could change the catch-phrase for the Zodiac bit, to “Gemini Calling! Gemini Calling!”Erich: Is that a joke?Joyce: Yes.Erich: We’ll let you know.

And now we’ve got producer choice.Joyce: What’s that?Erich: It’s when, if you don’t do what the senior producer tells you to do, you get sent to fight on the Russian front.Joyce: OK, maybe not music, but what about horoscopes? The British love horoscopes. They think it’s funny that he does a V-sign back to front.Erich: So why do they follow him?Joyce: Because he’s not half as funny as Hitler.Erich: Mein Gott! You cannot say that! That is treason!Joyce: I hear that Tokyo Rose has music.Erich: Tokyo Rose?Joyce: The girl in Japan who does the broadcasts to the Americans in the Pacific, telling them they’re doomed The Oriental Lord Haw Haw.Erich: Hmm .. Well, I don’t have any budget for music and jokes There’s an economy drive on, you know. They don’t think something is serious until they can laugh at it That’s why they laugh at the Germans. That’s why they laugh at Churchill.Erich: They laugh at Churchill? At their own leader?Joyce: Sure They think he’s funny They think his voice is funny They think his cigar and his brandy are funny. I mean, that’s a bit gloomy as far as radio showbiz goes, isn’t it? No wonder we’re not getting the ratings.Erich: What do you suggest?Joyce: Well, maybe some music, some jokes.Erich: Music? Jokes? Mixed up with propaganda?Joyce: Why not? I know these people I’ve lived with the British. In wartime it’s hard to go out and measure radio ratings in enemy territory.

I don’t think we can really go and knock on doors on Coventry and say, “We are from Nazi radio. Can we ask you, how often do you listen to Lord Haw Haw?” Do you?Joyce: No, but …Erich: No, we can’t.Joyce: Yes, but …Erich: What’s on your mind, Bill?Joyce: Well, I just think the show’s a little serious, that’s all What do I do on the show? I’ll tell you what I do I come on and I tell people they’re about to die Then I say goodbye. But as a broadcaster, I would much prefer to …Erich: Yes ?Joyce: Look, the ratings haven’t been too good recently, have they? The listeners are dropping away, aren’t they?Erich: I don’t know.Joyce: Be honest with me.Erich: I really don’t know. Especially if you look like losing it.Joyce: Yes, but I don’t want to depress my audience.Erich: Depress them? Every night you go on radio and tell the British that they are about to be flattened, annihilated, wiped away, and now you say you don’t want to depress them?Joyce: As a German patriot, I want to depress the hell out of them, yes.