Cue Xmas TV...
My all-time favourite television shows are Doctor Who and Sex and the City. After a particularly long session with both one study day I had the brilliant idea of combining the two. Two weeks later I was standing in front of a group of television executives pitching my idea for a show in which a sex columnist travels through time and space in a Manolo Blahnik shoebox that’s bigger on the inside than the outside. The response was surprisingly lukewarm (which just goes to show you can’t give the people what they want) and I was told to go back and ‘write what I know’. So I did.I present for your viewing pleasure my dream line-up for the Christmas Day TV listings, inspired by the events of the past year. Merry Christmas – see you all in 2006!
3.00 The alternative Queen’s speechSir Derek Morris addresses the profession at the end of our annus horribilis. Special guests: Michael Pomery as the Duke of Edinburgh and Harvie Brown as Prince Charles (see the August editorial!).
3.15 Film: The Great EscapeA group of plucky pension scheme actuaries launches an audacious bid to persuade the Pensions Commission to declare that everything in the garden is rosy in its final report. Sadly they fail and in a heartrending finale the Commission rounds them up and has them all shot by machine-gun. Adair Turner tries to jump a barbedwire fence on a motorcycle and almost makes it.
6.00 University ChallengeAs part of a fact-finding mission for the proposed future of the CT series exams post-Morris, the profession’s education board spends a month living as full-time students. After discovering the joys of the Tesco Value brand, hilarity ensues as the flat-share descends into something out of The Young Ones. Watch out for a punk-haired Trevor Watkins smashing through walls with his trusty hamster, Special Patrol Group. 7.00 The qx factorActuarial students are challenged to fit a suitable mortality table to the weekly cullings on The X Factor. The expected future working lifetime of the eventual winner is then estimated. Previous winner Steve Brookstein performs a selection of decrement-inspired songs including ‘2 become 1’ and ‘I will survive’.
8.00 The ¯A TeamIn 2002 a crack consultancy team was suspended by a disciplinary board for a breach of conduct they didn’t commit. They promptly escaped to the financial services underground where they survive as actuaries of fortune. If you have a problem, if everyone else is too expensive, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… the ¯A Team.In tonight’s episode, the ¯A team hijacks a van carrying Chinese ST4 exam scripts and torches them using a flamethrower built out of paperclips. BA pities the fools who won’t get graded.
9.00 Film: The PostmanIn a post-apocalyptic future, Kevin Costner assumes the mantle of a postman to bring hope to the scattered desolate communities of survivors. There is no government, no infrastructure, and bandits stalk his every move. And yet the exam permits still manage to arrive earlier than they did in April.
10.55 Sex and the ActuaryShort film.
11.00 The ProfessionalsGritty ‘real-life’ drama about a group of young actuaries who never appear in newspapers for being drunk and disorderly or publish rude words in their magazine columns…
