Dear old Coutts, the private bank used by the King, now requires clients to have £3 million in the kitty before they deign to allow you to open an account. The £3 million minimum deposit is the biggest single jump of the bank’s wealth test in its illustrious 333-year history, designed to attract ‘ultra-high-net-worth individuals’ apparently. Whoever they are, I am not one of them.  

I had an account at Coutts opened for me by my mother when I was 15 at a small, rather cosy little branch it used to have on the corner of Sloane Street and Cadogan Square.  As I went in and out, I got to know the cashiers who greeted me by name, which made me feel I’d really arrived, although where I wasn’t quite sure. I knew that it was a grand bank and felt rather privileged to have an account there, mainly because it seemed to impress people and make them think I had more money than I did.   

The chequebooks were nice, too – different to the chequebooks of ordinary mortals, with a grander layout and slightly larger in size, as befitted the members of this snazzy club I’d joined without any effort at all on my part. It was the 1970s and lots of people I knew had an account at Coutts, the bankers of choice for the landed gentry and the aristocracy since the end of the........

© The Spectator