It’s been a week now since I lost a million on the markets, and my boss has ­simmered down. I have even managed to regain some of my credibility by clawing back a portion of my losses. But not all my fellow traders have been so fortunate. Indeed, a number of my closest colleagues have had a visit from the security man with the bin bag. “Why them and not me?” I ask.

The truth is, in today’s City ­environment, the atmosphere is more political than it would be in the gents at the House of Commons if Gordon Brown walked in on David Miliband.

Modesty forbids me to say that my survival is all down to me being so damn charismatic and funny, but how else can you explain me staying on the payroll with a P&L so ugly? Our phoenix-like PM suddenly looks like a miracle-worker for whipping the City into shape – until you ­remember that he looked the other way while we indulged­ in gluttonous excess over the past few years.

The lesson is that the City needs the occasional slap from the nanny state. Like me trying to stick to my salad diet in a cake shop, self-regulation is no regulation. My risk manager knows this only too well, as he now keeps my inner trading animal on the world’s shortest leash, while I do my best to make friends and influence people.

But how much politics is too much? In this dog-eat-dog environment, performance-obsessed bankers now behave like image-obsessed Cabinet ministers. And I’m up there with the best of them. At a time when City job losses are running at almost 28,000 this year, it certainly doesn’t seem fair that I keep my pretty head on while others get shafted.

But the more politics infiltrates­ the City, the more we bankers understand that a joke and a smile is often the deciding difference as to whether we sink or swim in the Square Mile. And a smidge of lipstick doesn’t hurt.