Every Monday we feature a favourite Alex cartoon selected by our readers.

There are various reasons why people might have a favourite Alex cartoon. We like to think that it’s because they find the joke funny, but it can sometimes be for more trivial reasons: because a character in the cartoon has the same name as them, drives the same model of car or simply because the strip appeared in the newspaper on a significant day, like the birth of their child.

However reader William Porter tells us that he chose this particular cartoon because he loved the expressions of horror on Alex and Clive’s faces when they correctly guess the reason for the non-availability of the meeting rooms. It’s always nice when the drawings get a mention. Charles studied fine art and worked as a portrait painter before opting to become a cartoonist and there is a lot of nuance and detail in his artwork.

William reports that he survived the round of redundancies at his bank that accompanied the appearance of this cartoon in 2003, but was not so lucky on a couple of subsequent occasions. Being fired is an occupational hazard for bankers with the regular headcount reduction culls that banks impose. These are like banishments in “The Traitors” in that they come around on a predictable basis and the selection process is fairly arbitrary, meaning that it’s not always the right people who get kicked out. This gives everyone a reason to feel nervous once a quarter. Add to that the nerves that they suffer in bonus season and banking amounts to a pretty stressful job.

Even investment bank bosses would not be so ruthless as to actually reduce headcount to zero (as this would entail them losing their own jobs, plus not retaining a buffer zone of employees to fire to protect themselves in the next downturn), but we needed a snappy name that would convey the brutality of the operation without a lengthy verbal explanation. (*)

William tells us that over the years the Alex cartoon so closely paralleled his own career that his colleagues at the bank where he worked became convinced that he was secretly writing it and had hired us to chronicle his life in the national press. This delusion occurred quite a lot. It was rather sweet how bankers had no idea how closely their lives and experiences resembled those of other bankers. Now that Alex is no longer a daily strip, perhaps becoming Boswells to some affluent retired banker might provide us with useful future employment. For Charles it would be back to his previous career depicting the lifestyles of the wealthy and privileged.

(*) Of course with the increasing adoption of AI by banks, zero headcount may soon be an attainable goal.

Click on the cartoon above to see it in its original 2000s context.

If you’ve got any suggestions for a favourite cartoon for future inclusion please email us. And do tell us if there’s a particular reason why it appealed to you.