Apparently the newspaper that had reported the wax statue story last night, the London Evening Exposer, had obtained my card from a source at M&S. They then called up the Lederman CEO, Tom Pastrami, and told him that unless they received three full-page advertisements for the newspaper immediately, the Exposer would say that the joker with the statue was a Lederman employee ‘who is typical of the sort of idiotic professional culture that the banks are creating in London …’

Tom immediately summoned all the Lederman managers interfacing with consultants and contractors and, before anything else, abused their mothers. Then he told them to go and make sure that not a word of this got out of the office building into the larger public.

After this, Tom summoned a meeting of the Press and Media Committee. The committee has now decided to place three full-page advertisements for the Lederman Learning Through Laughing Foundation in the Exposer. This foundation, which will be created immediately, will be dedicated to teaching language to under-advantaged youth from the disproportionately asset-free neighbourhoods of London through the medium of stand-up comedy. (You may not know of this, but stand-up comedy is very popular here in London. People pay money to see comedians stand on a stage and crack jokes. Nothing else. Just jokes. One after the other. Gouri keeps telling me to go and watch. No thanks.)

After this, Dominic explained, Tom asked HR to see if they could identify who the culprit contractor was. Unfortunately (!) while Lederman has 12,000 employees worldwide, it also has over 3200 consultants and contractors. Out of which 1800 worked out of the London office. HR said identifying the criminal in question would be impossible.

Unable to pinpoint the target, Tom then asked managers such as Dominic to have a chat with their teams.

Dominic told us, with a sense of tremendous secrecy that it was important for all of us to stay out of trouble. In this atmosphere, he said, Lederman would think nothing of offloading the entire Dufresne consultant project if a PR disaster like this happened again.

Thankfully he also said that he was sure none of us were involved with the incident.

He said it was difficult to believe that any of us middle to senior Lederman and Dufresne employees shopped with all the other local middle-class types and wannabe tourists at M&S. He asked if any of us went there. One or two of the analysts put up their hands looking slightly embarrassed. Some people chuckled. Dominic looked at me.

I told him I had walked past Marks and Spencer a couple of times, while going to Hugo Boss or Massimo Dutti, but had always assumed it was a charity organization of some kind giving away second-hand clothing.

He nodded in approval. The analysts looked crushed.

Finally he warned us again, told us to keep our heads low and maintain a low profile for a while, and then sent us away.