Just like that girl, who is always very efficient, Emily arrived on time, quickly did a round of introductions, explained what we were going to do and then nicely moderated the discussion. And throughout the meeting she constantly took notes. And all this while dressed in a snugly fitting knee length skirt, white shirt and sweater on top.

One look at Emily in her sweater and all my previous impressions about English women have changed.

But then LLTLF is also about the underprivileged children. So let me focus on that aspect.

Tom said that Lederman was committed to spending at least a few million pounds on the LLTLF initiative. He said that the bank had been criticized in the past for not spending enough on Corporate Social Responsibility. He said that while he was not a believer in the idea of CSR as practiced by some of the other banks, LLTLF seemed like a genuinely good and fun idea.

Tom then asked us for our frank opinions on the idea.

One of the volunteers asked him why the bank was not just directly giving the money away to underprivileged children. Instead of involving so many people and spending money on comedians and all that.

There was a collective gasp around the table.

Once again Diary we witness the downfall of a young person’s career because they misunderstand the meaning of the word frank in a professional environment. Poor fellow. He thought it meant honest or truthful.

Tom looked at him quietly for a few moments without saying anything. Emily kept on taking notes.

I was just about going to diffuse the tension with a joke about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson which I secretly Googled on my BlackBerry when Tom politely smiled and explained the rationale behind LLTLF.

He explained that LLTLF was an idea initiated by the board of directors to achieve multiple aims. First of all it helped to give the bank a fun personality. He said that most banks have a very boring, serious image. Common people were afraid of them. Stand-up comedy would help to soften Lederman’s image.

(This is absolutely true Diary. Just think of our Indian banks. ICICI or HDFC or Bank of Baroda. The only good thing about HDFC Bank is that they keep sending my credit card bills to my hostel address in Ahmedabad. Otherwise they are so boring and utterly useless. I am feeling sleepy just thinking of Bank of Baroda. They should at least give it a more modern name. Like BaroBank or BarodaNext or FirstBaroda. I thought of those three just now without any research, analysis or focus group studies.)