who is Cityboy?

Cityboy is a remarkably successful stock broker who’s been working in the City for over ten years. He sometimes wears a suit and has been known to pretend to take his job seriously for prolonged periods.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Cityboy was actually a hippy traveller who accidentally fell into his lucrative job after bumming around the world for a couple of years. Despite having told himself since the beginning that he would only do his ‘nonsense’ for five years he finds himself in the same position of thousands of his co-workers who find that the rich rewards that the City offers and the lack of obvious alternatives make him continue doing what he does despite loftier aspirations. Over time he has got quite good at his job and even grown to enjoy aspects of it but he has never lost a surreal and cynical take on all that he sees. He finds the greed and the arrogance that he witnesses each hour of every working day quite horrific and hears himself apologizing at dinner parties for his choice of career long before he’s offended anyone.

In September 2006 he was offered the opportunity to write the ‘Cityboy’ column for ‘The Londonpaper’ every Monday and it quickly became a kind of confessional as well as an opportunity to publicly vent his vitriol at the hideousness that he saw all around him. It is slightly unusual to have such an experienced broker with such a subversive view on things willing to offer his genuine (and occasionally humorous) insights into the Square Mile and the popularity of his column can be attributed to this bizarre combination. Since Cityboy still works as a stockbroker and couldn’t get away with half of what he says if his identity were revealed he chooses to remain anonymous.

If pushed, Cityboy would admit that his ultimate mission is to destroy the City from within by inciting Londoners’ righteous indignation through revealing the terrible goings on he witnesses every day. This is not just because of his strongly-held views about the damage that the City is doing to British society but rather because he has long realised that he is too weak to actually give up work and will only ever end his career by bringing the whole system down that supports it. If he can achieve this, he’ll die happy. Read his views and join his mission!

Description by …. “A friend”