Britain's most famous stockbroker has just been sacked. CHRIS TITLEY talks to the York man who told him to clear his desk and get out

THE financial world was rocked. Wednesday's Daily Telegraph deemed the news so sensational it placed it above the lead story on the front page. "Alex, you're fired!" the banner screamed. "What now for one of the great City institutions?"

On Radio 4's Today programme, James Naughtie was almost rendered speechless by Alex Masterley's sacking.

The man himself is bitter. "I'm being escorted off the premises after a 12-year career at Megabank," he stormed yesterday.

So what of the man who despatched his star performer so ruthlessly? "Alex will need to find another job," he said. "He's got two people to support, Charles and me. He pays our mortgages for us."

Those are the words of Russell Taylor, one half of the team behind the Alex cartoon strip. Drawn by Charles Peattie, Alex appears every weekday in the Daily Telegraph.

For 16 years, Russell and Charles have chronicled the highs and lows of the self-centred broker, complete with pin-stripe suit and permanent sneer. For much of his 4,000 or so strips, Alex's pickings have been rich and his living easy.

But on Wednesday the champagne bubbles went flat.

Like many bankers in the current chilly economic climate, Alex discovered he was not indispensable. Megabank gave him 20 minutes to clear his desk and get out.

Now what will he do? Russell intends to leave him jobless for a while. And then there may be an even worse fate in store for the City slicker.

"He has got a Yorkshire client, Mr Hardcastle, who Alex hates going to see. Perhaps I could send him up to this awful factory to eat curly sandwiches."

This is all tongue-in-cheek, of course. Russell himself is a Yorkshireman - although you wouldn't know it from the refined southern accent.

He was born in York. His dad Hal went to Nunthorpe School and became an RAF pilot, as well as helping to form the York branch of the Campaign for Real Ale with wife Iona.

Russell doesn't remember York much. His dad's job took the family south when he was only five. But he still returns to visit family in the city.

"I am a Yorkshireman," Russell admits. "I could play cricket for Yorkshire, apart from the fact that I am rubbish at cricket."

What he is good at is writing jokes, a talent he discovered early on. "I did my own magazine at school. I started it to be rude about all my teachers. They didn't like it very much."

After reading Russian and Philosophy at Oxford University, he went on holiday to the Soviet Union. Friends considered him mad.

"People thought Russia was a cold and miserable place with no food where you were followed by KGB agents. And that's just what happens."

He wrote a comic travelogue about his experiences, entitled USSR: From An Original Idea By Karl Marx.

It was at an advertising magazine's Christmas party that he met Charles Peattie, a former portrait painter turned cartoonist. He was already drawing a strip for Melody Maker and had a commission to do another for the London Daily News, Robert Maxwell's ill-fated newspaper for the capital.

Charles was looking for a partner. With alcohol-induced bravado Russell said he could write a cartoon (he had never attempted it before in his life).

At their next meeting, Alex was born. "I wanted a strip about people living in London. Back in the Eighties, yuppies were the big thing, so we decided we would make him a yuppie. He had a yuppie mobile phone before most people had mobile phones, he drove a BMW, had a lovely home and girlfriend, and was quite objectionable."

When the London Daily News folded, the Alex strip was snapped up by the Independent, then poached by the Daily Telegraph.

Forty-two year old Russell is an unlikely author of Alex. He has neither worked in an office nor bought a share in his life.

"You think I'd trust those people? Last year they were urging me to put more money in their pension funds. If I had done that, where would it be now? Basically, right down the toilet."

It is this distance from - and healthy cynicism towards - the City that allows him to be funny, he says. People expect him to own a designer suit, wear a Rolex and drive a Porsche. He doesn't - he couldn't afford to, even with stockbrokers snapping up the original Alex strips at £180 a time.

But if he did, he wouldn't understand what was so hilarious about people with so much money while making so many mistakes.

For example, the dot com boom and bust might have lost some people their fortunes, but it was gold dust to Russell. "We had Alex talking to company chairmen who were 17 years old schoolboys. It was absurd."

Russell develops most of his jokes from gossip over lunches with contacts in the City. They used to pay, but in these cash-strapped days he picks up the tab (a business expense, natch).

"They will tell me stuff you can't find out from other sources. Ways to ensure you drive expensive cars. Ways to get upgrades on aeroplanes. Ways to get a day off work to play golf.

"It's amusing to find the methods they have to cheat the system."

Alex isn't the only cartoon Russell has worked on with Charles Peattie. He also co-wrote the Celeb strip in its early days. Celeb is still going strong in satirical magazine Private Eye but with a different writer (who also co-scripted its poorly received television adaptation starring Harry Enfield).

Russell enjoys breaking out of the cartoon strip box, never more so than when he wrote another humorous book, about his attempt on the New York marathon. The Looniness Of The Long Distance Runner is out this month in Andre Deutsch paperback at £6.99, with all the proceeds going to charity.

If he's not lunching or writing, then Russell is probably composing music for TV documentaries. The talented pianist has created scores for films including Kids Behind Bars and The Dying Rooms.

"I have got the grim music market covered," he said. "I've never written in the major key."

Next month, he and Charles have a date with the Queen at Buckingham Palace to collect the MBEs awarded them in the New Year's Honours. When Downing Street phoned to tell him, he thought it was a wind-up. His dad still can't believe it.

Then it will be back to the drawing board. City whizzkid Alex will have to find another job soon if he is to keep this York-born writer in the lunches to which he has become accustomed.

Updated: 11:45 Friday, January 17, 2003