AS banking scandals rumble on, Devizes is celebrating its annual festival. Apart from musical events and stand-up comedy, events include talks by celebrities. One of these was by Henry Blofeld — or Blowers as he is known as in much of the cricketing world.

He began his talk — given in Devizes’ splendid 18th century Assembly Room — with a reference to his age, mentioning his two artificial hips. He went on for some time on this note in his trademark plummy` accent. At one point, he mentioned his late colleague, John Arlott, and his practise of imbibing wine in the commentary box. Apparently, once when the wine waiter came along to take orders, he was told by Arlott: “Five red and four white.” The waiter asked if he meant glasses. “Of course not, man! That’s five bottles of red, and four of white.”

On another day at Lord’s, Blofeld was hailed by Arlott who was struggling up the stairs to the commentary box with two large brief cases, and helped to carry them. Once installed, Arlott opened them before the commentary team, and revealed a dozen bottles of wine. “Here we are, gentlemen,” he said with some satisfaction. “These should see us through till lunch.”

As Blowers informed his audience, he was born “with a whacking great silver spoon in his mouth”. Sent off to a boarding school when he was seven, he was not allowed to eat with his parents till he was 14. He spoke of his terror while waiting for his school report to arrive at the start of the summer holidays.

His passion for cricket began when he was in Eton where he kept wicket and went on to captain the First XI. Although he did play for Cambridge University (he left without getting a degree), his cricketing career petered out, and he went into merchant banking, hating every moment. His break came when he was sent by the Guardian to cover England’s tour of India in 1963-64, when he was almost asked to play due to a Test batsman’s illness.

Over the years, his often rambling commentary has become an integral part of BBC’s Test Match Special. Of late, he is called upon less and less as cricket commentary becomes the exclusive preserve of retired Test players. But professionalism has little place for the sort of eccentricity and irreverence Blowers brought to commentary.

Despite the years of listening pleasure he has given me, I must confess I found his talk grating after a while. The upper-class sense of entitlement, even if recounted in the manner of P.G. Wodehouse’s immortal character Bertie Wooster, began to get on my nerves. When he spoke of just “walking into Cambridge” because of his father’s connections, and getting his banking job thanks to an uncle, he reminded us of the nepotism rampant in upper-class English society.

We sneaked out in the interval, unable to face another session of Blower’s bombast. I wasn’t sorry I went, though: in a sense, he is part of an England that is rapidly dying out. Now, even the children of the very rich have to struggle to get into a good university, no matter what their family connections are. And getting a banking job, even with a good degree, is very tough in recessionary Britain.

From Blowers, let me move seamlessly to banking: the media has discussed little recently except the scandal of interest-rate fixing at Barclay’s, and the computer crash at RBS/NatWest bank. The latter has led to hundreds of thousands of account holders being unable to draw cash as a computer glitch had blocked the bank from updating their deposits. Although the bank grovelled and promised compensation, politicians and the media joined hands in blasting the executives, and gleefully announcing how much they had paid themselves in bonuses.

But the Barclay scam was of a different order altogether. Here was a bank that had earlier been heavily criticised for its role in the greed-fuelled frenzy that had led to the crash of 2008, once again caught with its hand in the cookie jar. Now, the US and British governments have imposed fines worth an unprecedented 290 million pounds on Barclays for rigging Libor, an important inter-bank interest rate, between 2005 and 2009. It is suspected that this is the tip of the iceberg, and as many as 20 more banks might be involved in this scam worldwide.

Apart from fines imposed by state regulators, many clients who might have lost money due to this manipulation of Libor are poised to file costly lawsuits that could run into billions of pounds. I can see expensive corporate lawyers rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of the court cases. Despite the financial pain to come, it seems there might be no criminal charges brought against the rogue traders responsible. Apparently, there are no specific laws these bank executives broke when they fiddled interest rates to increase profits and bonuses.

However, the rage in the UK over this criminal behaviour is palpable. The Guardian recently devoted its entire ‘letters to the editor’ page to readers’ comments over the banking scams. Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, deemed the scandal to be of ‘biblical proportions’ in an article in the Observer. Bob Diamond, the American CEO of Barclays, has become a lightning rod for the storm of criticism and protest that is building up. Having received 14 million pounds last year in salary and bonuses, Diamond has become the face of corporate greed and immorality.

Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, reminded us that once ‘banks were too big to fail’, and therefore received billions in taxpayers’ money to bail them out. Now, they seem ‘too big to jail’ as there isn’t tough enough a response to punish them for their endlessly criminal behaviour. If these scams weren’t enough, there is now the scandal with major banks selling complex, expensive and ill-explained deals to small businesses to protect them from interest fluctuations. Many firms have been driven out of business as a result.

Clearly, banking is not a very popular profession in the UK at the moment.