It still amazes me, all those people that don’t work in the City who presume that everyone who does is a millionaire. There are loads of millionaires in the City, but there are even more that wished they were. And therein lies the problem – the “millionaire wannabes” who, in my experience, tend to be young, twentysomething Essex boys (the posh part, of course).

Just the other day I ventured out to meet a client for lunch, taking with me a junior member of my team. The minute we stepped over the threshold of the £100-per-head restaurant, Junior Boy seized the moment to reincarnate himself into an embarrassing parody of what he thinks constitutes impressive trader behaviour.

Junior Boy swaggered up to the cocktail bar with such force that his ridiculous bird’s nest hairdo flapped so much I could smell the hair gel in the backdraft he’d created.

Careful not to stab my leg on his “child catcher” shoes, I positioned myself on a bar stool next to him and waited for the client to arrive. Thankfully, the menu was the size of a small poster, behind which I hid, pretending Junior Boy wasn’t with me.

Junior Boy then wasted no time in introducing himself to a couple of “young laydeez” (as he insisted on addressing them). The young girlies soon switched their attention from the cocktail they were sharing (to keep costs down, no doubt) to Junior Boy, who was by now peppering his sentences with the words “City” and “deal.”

When Junior Boy pulled out a Visa debit card to pay for the girls’ cocktail and it was declined, I could bear it no longer and decided to cut short his fantasy tales of the City, thus spoiling his homely tryst.

Pretending that I’d just noticed him, I said: “I told you to wait with the car” and quickly shoved him towards the door. Then, turning to the girls, I muttered: “Honestly, just can’t get the staff these days.” With eyes like saucers, they turned their attention to me as I slapped down my black American Express card on the bar like a proper City Girl.