Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Always fun, 1 Jan 2006
Alex is the only cartoon that I make a point of reading regularly, and this annual - like the others before it - is very enjoyable. I'm never sure whether these collections, entitled "Best Of", contain all of the cartoons for a year, but this one has 228 cartoons which I guess (taking into account weekends and holidays) is probably all of them.
As with any long-running cartoon series, some of the themes and jokes are repeated or predictable, such as the seemingly endless stream of cartoons about annual bonuses. Nevertheless, they always try to have new storylines which keeps the series surprisingly fresh.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterley Production, 3 April 2008
I always look forward to the arrival of the annual "best of Alex" as my birthday present - it's an invaluable update if you don't take the Daily Telegraph every day, or if you wish to refresh your memory. I first came across Alex, that cynical, worldly wise - but never weary - and manipulative investment banker, when he appeared in "The Independent" after the Big bang in 1986, and followed him to the Telegraph when it became clear that the people he was supposed to be satirising loved him.
The 2008 edition, which runs from August 2007 shows Alex, Clive and their investment banking colleagues dealing with the early days of the credit crisis, and enjoying a few forays into imaginary worlds as well. I particularly enjoyed the episode where Alex and Clive venture into the imaginary Oxford of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights aka Golden Compass, and come across the alithometer. This, Alex explains, is a mysterious, complex instrument, but no one knows what it does, who invented it of how to use it..."just like those financial instruments,[CDOs and SIVs] that none of us understand back on our world".
Some of the jokes require a recollection of what was happenning in the City at the time, but I can still chuckle at my first Alex annual published back in 1988 - "The Unabashed Alex". Let me relate two of the jokes:
"I've put us both down for the combat survival zone combat game this weekend, Clive...
"We'll be in the corporate finance team playing against a team made up of those spivs and wide boys from the Metrobank Moneybroking Department...
In the final panel you see the spivs and wide boys charging Alex and colleagues with paintball guns at the ready, and Alex orders:
"Don't shoot until you see the whites of their socks."
Second favourite: A more typical four-panel cartoon, wih the typical twist in the tail in the fourth, has Alex and boss Rupert talking at the (wine) bar:
Rupert does all the talking:
"When you're young it's fanatically important what sort of car you're seen to be driving...
"Take your BMW, Alex... it isn't simply a means of transport, it's a symbol of your position in society, your manhood...
"But when you get to my age and position, things like that appear silly and trifling, a car really ceases to have value as a status symbol...
"That's why I got the helicopter."
Boom boom! Brilliant stuff! Beg steal or borrow the old ones (or try second hand books on Amazon!). This one will keep me entertained as I dip into it over the festive period.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Same great fun as every year !!!, 14 Oct 2004
"Best of Alex 2004" is a collection of the great Alex cartoons. Peatty and Taylor show the real, hard live of an Investmentbanker with great humour. Unfortunately, because of Alex being unepmloyed, most the cartoons in the current issue de not take place at a bank, but in many other businesses Alex was look down all the years before. Again, great fun, great satire!
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