Hello children. Today, we are going to look at how the English language evolves. Now, as we all know, there is no English equivalent for the german word “shadenfreude”, so we have adopted it into our mother tongue – this is called a “loanword”. There is a branch of irony (ask a grown-up what that means – although do avoid asking an American grown-up or anyone called Alanis) that I feel deserves it’s own word, so today, boys and girls, I am creating the word Ironfreude, the joy at finding that someone who has been slighted by someone getting their own back in an ironic way.

Now for an example of this, we are going to look at that nice Mr Branson’s desire to acquire a high street presence and look a little closer at his right hand person, Jayne-Anne Gadhia’s background. Jayne-Anne used to work for Virgin Direct, and then moved to the RBS to do – oh, to run mortgage stuff, I think. It is said that RBS, being a dour and unprogressive bunch didn’t care much for an English person telling them how to lend money and so, Jayne-Anne moved back to Virgin. Then she and that nice Mr Branson attempted to acquire the Northern Rock when it got into it’s troubles [*] but they failed to persuade the government to let them have it. Nasty Government. So, having failed to acquire the Northern Rock, and having bought ^h^h^h^h^h established their own banking license, they are now looking for a high street distribution method. That is a bit like having your own sweetshop in every town. What fun!

Ironfreude, then, is the humour found in the discovery that the RBS is being forced to sell 316 branches under EU competition law, and finding that Jayne-Anne/Virgin Money is stepping forward to try to buy them.

It isn’t very often that I find banks funny, but I do love the idea that the most aggressive and acquisitive upstart in the UK banking sector, the RBS (who I have been with since the year dot – the Hotel California of the banking world – when they were Williams and Glyns and they used to send me cheques back with my statements every month. Proper customer service, that was) finally have to sell off some branches to someone they decided to….part company with.

And that, children, is how we get new words in this language of ours. Geoffrey, Bungle? Shall we go and meet Zippy at the gay bar?

[*] Am I alone in blaming that Peston fool for creating the run on that bank? Where is responsible journalism when you need it? In the pub with the same policeman that is never around when you need him either, I expect. Perhaps the teacher joins them every time it snows, I don’t know….