Like Bankstone lynchpin Dickoe Tyson, and all the best people, obviously, comedian Frank Skinner is a lifelong West Brom fan.
So what on earth possessed him, a couple of years back, to invest his £2m lifesavings in the insurer whose three-letter logo used to feature so boldly on the shirts of the diabolical Man U?
What possessed him, as Skinner is now telling anyone who’ll listen – BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Disks included – was the advice of ‘Queen’s Bankers’ Coutts & Co, who persuaded the hapless Skinner that AIG was safe as houses.
“As it turned out,” he claims, “I got half my money back but the rest is frozen until 2012, and even then there is no guarantee that I will get it.
“I’ve put it into National Savings,” Skinner says. “I probably won’t get any interest on it but I don’t care.”
Kind of a lukewarm celebrity endorsement for NS&I there.
