Robert Peston lashes out at fat cats

The BBC's business editor Robert Peston - the journalist who broke the story of Northern Rock and arrival of the credit crunch on Britain's doorstep - has attacked the investors who have caused the crisis. "Many of the bankers who created this poison trousered massive rewards, running to tens of millions of dollars each. They can sit on a beach and need never work again, whereas we are paying the price."

Peston, who joined the BBC two years ago, was previously at the Financial Times. There, he famously fell out with Alastair Campbell, then Downing Street press secretary. "Another question from the Peston school of smart-arse journalism," snarled Campbell in response to a difficult question.

Described in a profile by today's Daily Telegraph as "the man of the moment", Peston, 47, hasn't always found it so easy to cultivate contacts in the City. In the Eighties, "you couldn't get a story unless you had a drink… and the amount drunk was colossal. After a year or two of feeling completely poisoned by the end of the week, I wondered if I could stick it." Thankfully for Peston, post-crash American abstemiousness spread to the City in the Nineties. "It was a genuine relief." Now, with profits down and bonuses slashed thanks to the global credit crunch - predicted by Peston - it seems there are sober times ahead for the City once more.