You know, that heartwarming tale of how rich people can be supernaturally terrorised into sharing their wealth. Scrooge has become a byword for miserliness and misanthropy but he's eventually redeemed by the three Ghosts of Christmas.
It's sometimes said that Charles Dickens got his inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge from a Ebenezer Scroggie, a banker from Edinburgh who was buried in Canongate Kirkyard, with a gravestone that is now lost. The theory is that Dickens noticed the gravestone that described Scroggie as being a "meal man" (corn merchant) but misread it as "mean man".
The story has a certain ring to it; after all, to this day bankers make the best heart donors as theirs are little used. Did I tell you that I worked for the ANZ Bank? I'd joined them almost as soon as I had got here as a young migrant from Germany and I felt at home immediately because Germans have no sense of humour and neither have bankers - except for one perhaps but you won't be reading this, will you, John?
