“Sorry to bug you,” wrote a reader, “but my brother-in-law, a senior banker at Goldman, wants a ‘bad' business book for Christmas and I thought you might have some ideas. Surely there is an opportunity here for a bad business book award? The sector deserves it. Best regards.”
My first thought was that people give each other pretty odd things for Christmas.
One year, my mother-in-law was given a crocheted flamenco doll with a skirt designed to fit perfectly over a toilet roll, to remove any risk of embarrassment that naked toilet paper might cause. While it is hard to know why anyone would want a crocheted loo roll cover, it is harder still to know why anyone would want a bad business book. In particular, I wonder: a) why a senior Goldman banker has asked for such a thing; and b) whether it is responsible to give him one. Haven't bankers had enough bad ideas about business recently without encouraging them to have more?