Every Monday we feature a favourite Alex cartoon selected by our readers. This week’s offering is from 1989.

Reader Johnny Colville, who suggested this cartoon, tells us that the phrase “pas devant les clients” “became part of his vernacular”. It’s always pleasing to hear about people adopting expressions or aphorisms from our cartoon in their jobs, though far be it from us to imply that hoodwinking one’s clients is an integral part of day-to-day business in the financial world.

Much of the fun in constructing an Alex cartoon strip comes from using verbal trickery to lull the reader into thinking that our characters are doing something straightforward when they are actually being machiavellian. Russell studied modern languages at university and we have both always taken a perverse pleasure in showing how language can be a barrier to communication, rather than a bridge to it.

Clive’s French is deliberately schoolboy-ish as he literally translates the phrase “say no more”. “Mon brave” is rather archaic, being the French equivalent of “old chap”. He probably got it from a black-and-white film of The Three Musketeers.

Perhaps it’s patronising of us to imply that the Japanese wouldn’t speak French, but as English is the international language of business it’s the one everyone learns. This is good for us Brits, because we don’t have to go to the bother of learning a new language just to do our jobs. But it also works against us in that we can’t have confidential discussions with our colleagues without the foreign clients understanding.

With Mitchell and Webb and Little Britain having had some of their sketches pulled recently due to changing political sensibilities, we’ve looked over our old cartoons, like this one, from the 80s. We’re pleased to say that we weren’t ever racist, though perhaps we were occasionally a little rude about the Japanese. However the stereotypical inscrutability that the clients display in this cartoon could mask the fact that they actually understood what Alex and Clive were talking about all along, but just didn’t let on.

The Japanese were big players in financial markets in the 1980s with the Nikkei index reaching a high of 38,915 points in 1989. It then collapsed and didn’t attain that peak again until 35 years later in 2024. In the two years since it has put on another 27,000 points. Bubble, anyone?

This cartoon features in our forthcoming book “The Best of Alex 1987 - 89”. To be kept updated on publication details please join our mailing list.

If you click on the strip above you can read the cartoon in its original 80s 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.