When Seth Freedman dropped out of university to seek his fortune in the City, he found it – and lost it – and found it again.

Such is the volatility of the trading floor where millions can be lost in seconds and where desperation and ulcer-generating anxiety is daily fare.

' I came to understand,' he says,' that you don't have to be a nice guy, you don't have to get on with your colleagues, be a team player, be respected or liked. ALL you have to do is make money. That's what you're there for, the one and ONLY thing you're there for. No one cares about anything else.'

He talks about earning bonuses in the millions for one transaction, flying thousands of miles, first class, for a weekend which included every vice he'd ever heard about – and quite a few he hadn't. ‘We could spend more on booze and cocaine in two days than most people earn in a lifetime.’ He says.

Whilst this high life was being enjoyed by lowlifes, they were getting themselves deeper and deeper into debt with other people's money. The wise ones squirreled some away in secret bank accounts, sure the Golden Goose would, one day, stop laying. And as we all know, it did. But it wasn't the fat cats who suffered, although a few of them, the addicts who could never really tone down their debauchery, did lose quite a lot.

The ones who paid for the high life and the ones who paid for the downfall, were small people like you and me. Life savings went down the tubes because the very people who were supposed to be increasing our hard-earned, were in it only for themselves.

Seth Freedman tells a story you would have found hard to believe before the Big Crash happened. Now we know only too well that it is all absolutely true.