After a brief appearance in London last year and a few months jetting around the world this autumn (“No real financial types, living or dead, were implied in this metaphor . . .”), The Daily Telegraph’s infamous investment banker is back where he belongs, grubbing around the City, lunching well, and trying to keep his job while all around him are losing theirs.

Alex is the only cartoon to have his own entry in Who’s Who. He’s also a complete git. He asks the audience to turn off any pesky electronic devices (doctors’ pagers, hearing aids, etc.); he has an SMS template for cancelling dinners with his wife; and he thinks disabled loos are essential in a building . . . they provide enough floor space to sleep off a hangover.

Robert Bathurst gives flesh and blood to the Megabanker (not a euphemism), playing him much as Rory Bremner played Tony Blair: oleaginous, full of excuses (“y’know . . . look . . .”), and totally convinced that by some mysterious alchemical process any statement will become True if you can only complete it without blinking.

It’s a fantastic performance from Bathurst (as all seven voices, including his put-upon wife), with a neat script, ranging smoothly from the Yuppie jokes of Alex’s early years – cf. ‘big phones’ – to the credit crunch, all peppered with now-sadly-familiar financial ‘industry’ jargon.

And the team of Phelim McDermott (director), Phil Eddolls (set) and Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer (video design) have created a snappy and minutely choreographed staging that permits Bathurst to interact with the other, 2D, characters – on a train, in the office, or in a cartoon lap-dancing bar.

The City clearly adores Alex. Authors Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor get their info from moles (delightfully using company funds to take the cartoonists out for a briefing), and, in the programme, Seymour Pierce (e.g.) are “glad to see that you too have used your hard-pressed entertainment budget to be here today”.

But if there’s one fly in the this otherwise fragrant ointment, it’s the howling laughter of a theatreful of Christmas-partying bankers, for whom even the most straightforward comedic insights (a comic strip is not the deepest medium) come as Damascene moments. As they knocked back champagne in the ‘business class’ seats and snarled with gleeful recognition at cracks concerning white-socked traders [Editors: please commission appropriate Ralph Steadman cartoon], I wondered if they had the faintest inkling what people think of them in these troubled economic times.

Leicester Square Theatre, until December 20. Tickets: telephone: 0844 847 2475, (www.leicestersquaretheatre.com).