On the Box: The City Uncovered With Evan Davis | Million Dollar Traders | The Real Sir Alan

Published on Friday 16 January 2009 16:32

THE CITY UNCOVERED WITH EVAN DAVIS BBC2 Wednesday, 9pm MILLION DOLLAR TRADERS BBC2 Monday, 9pm THE REAL SIR ALAN BBC2 Sunday, 9pm

AT THE start of The City Uncovered With Evan Davis, the presenter promised a series about some "incredibly talented people who made an error". Naturally I assumed Davis was talking about the BBC's Business Editor, Robert Peston, passing up the chance to front this definitive analysis of the credit crunch.

Where was Pesto and why was he not glorying in his Northern Rock scoop some more? Was he working on a series of his own, bigger and better, and exploiting his sinister stare and splurging delivery to the full? Was he planning a switch to light entertainment for a chat show where he could outdo Jonathan Ross, his only serious rival as the most annoying hair-flicker on TV? Or had he got fat and complacent and couldn't be bothered?

These questions concerned me for a while, as did Davis's decision to open proceedings in Venice. Niall Ferguson did the same thing for The Ascent Of Money recently and I even freeze-framed a shot of the Rialto because I thought I could spot the Channel 4 man on the other side, talking to a camera and telling an identical story about how the Italian word for bench – the first money-lenders sat on benches on the bridge – gave us "bank".

But 10 minutes later I forgot all about comparisons with other series, and absent presenters – no journalist is bigger than the story, after all. And the reason? Simply, brilliantly, Davis had just interrupted his dissection of the global economic kerfuffle to show us footage of David Bowie in a dress.

Every BBC programme should feature a completely random Bowie-as-Ziggy interlude – if I was director-general I'd write it into the charter. Dame David circa 1973 always makes me think of another carrot-haired beauty, Alison Donald. Is there a point to my own Ziggy interlude? Sort of. It was my obsession with Alison, climaxing in a futile attempt to make her blush by shoving the lyrics to Bowie's extremely rude song 'Time' under her nose, which distracted me from my maths lessons, resulting in a chronic dependency on series like The City Uncovered...

There was a point to Davis's Ziggy interlude as well. As a way of cashing in on his back catalogue, Bowie got into securitisation. Through "Bowie Bonds", he sold a stake in his future royalties. At least I think that's what happened. The issue of securitisation, and the part it played in the great financial balls-up, was incredibly complicated. At one point I thought my head was going to burst, resulting in a Pesto-style spillage of massive proportions. But this wasn't Davis's fault; he did his best to keep things simple for the drongos.

He uncovered connections between Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers, founded in the same year, with a chief cook and bottle-washer who excelled at sport (cricket in the case of the former, and squash) and who, when called to account, found it almost impossible to be self-critical. Davis got finance brains to give good quote about the bankers revelling in macho nicknames like "Gorilla" and being "ungodly" in their arrogance. And he did everything in a calm, unfussy manner, never drawing attention to himself. If one more Ziggy interlude can be permitted, he made some presenters I could name come across like preening glam rockers.

Also part of BBC2's City season. Million Dollar Traders has pitched eight novices into the Square Mile where they're being trained up as traders. Lex Van Dam has made at least two bad decisions in his life. The first was not becoming a movie villain; what a spiffing name that is. The second was offering up to $1m for the rookies to invest in the stock market, just as dealer screens turned red to signal the big crash. Bad timing for him; potential reality TV gold for the Beeb.

Who's going to be the Gordon Gekko of this bunch? Maybe not Caroline, the single mum: "To be wishing that the value of a company would go down so I could make money on it – that's horrendous." Perhaps Mike, the ex-Para, who admits he's so competitive that he races his wife to get dressed. Emile, the heavily tattooed Scouse fight promoter, seems to be enjoying trading much more than environmentalist Sam, who said it made him feel "a bit ill, like how I felt as a kid when I'd lied". But it won't be Simon, no way. In the first programme, the retired IT expert bought when he meant to sell.

You had to sympathise with Simon. The gruesome trading banter – "Hi mate… done for you, mate… mate, it's there" – must be very off-putting. But Lex Van Dam – who is receiving regular briefings from the traders' supervisor – wasn't happy. "S**t for brains – the man's lost his mind," he roared down the phone. Then he hung up, presumably to call his good friend Jean-Claude Van Damme and borrow a bazooka.

The supervisor, incidentally, is a veteran of the City at 29, having retired – minted – two years ago. He's doing all right, but not as well as Sir Alan Sugar, who started in business boiling beetroot and overcame the handicap of not being able to grow a proper beard to amass an 800m fortune and preside over one of the great reality shows, The Apprentice.

In The Real Sir Alan, Fiona Bruce promised us "unprecedented access to his private world". On his jet en route to his Marbella holiday home, he argued with Bruce about women in the workplace. He called footballers "mercenaries" and "scumbags". He admitted to a bad temper which sometimes hurt people. But the Essex mansion is almost naff, his family don't get handouts although they know they'll always be looked after, and, as on The Apprentice, you had to admire his complete disinterest in making himself appear endearing, which lends him a cuddly quality anyway.

More impressive still was his wife Ann, although, perfectly understandably, she did lose her poise the time he signed her birthday card: "Best wishes, Alan Sugar." He'll have recognised the colour of her rage – pure beetroot.