I was a very naughty last week. But then, I have had precious few opportunities to behave badly of late and there was probably an element of making up for lost time.

Like most of the people who have been fortunate enough to hold on to their jobs during the financial carnage, I’ve been keeping my head down, both at work and after hours.

But as the bear markets showed remarkable signs of life last week, aka the “sucker’s rally,” my colleagues and I felt the urge to celebrate with a night of pre-crunch- style debauchery.

In the boom times, nights out with my City mates usually meant ordering some £700 bottle of Vodka, getting a table at Boujis or 50 St. James, losing one or two articles of clothing and not remembering much about it the next day.

But it had been a different story the last time a big group of us went out last autumn. With Christmas parties being cancelled and expenses slashed, even my gainfully employed City friends seemed reluctant to go for it - their decadent spirits having evaporated along with their bonuses.

My most vivid recollection of that night was twenty-five of us leaning against the bar, splitting a bottle of gin, watching some Arabian prince and his party sit at OUR table and order ten magnums.

Thankfully, the sucker's rally had done a lot for morale and the group of us, mostly guys, started our evening in what’s known as the “Viagra triangle”- a cluster of City bars that are situated within the triangle connecting tube stations St. Paul’s, Bank, and Liverpool Street - that are full of old bankers on, yes, Viagra.

Predictably enough, we ended up in a strip club. Not my choice, but, as any City Girl will tell you, spending the good part of a night out with City Boys in a room full of women wearing nothing but G-strings is an occupational hazard.

The strippers rarely bothered me, naturally, because I'm not good for a tip. I always find it disturbing, however, that most of the girls are my age, and look exactly like me – long hair, slim, big eyes. It filled me with sadness to think that these girls were forced by their circumstances to sell their bodies.

Servicing old men, making the rich “richer,” and compromising your morals pretty much summed up a hard day’s work for both strippers and bankers. Both our businesses had very little to do with delivering any real “goods,” instead selling the promise of something better. While my rainmaking antics may stop short of twirling naked around a pole, I still couldn’t help but wonder, what is worse: selling your body for a living, or selling your soul?

Screwing people for money is no job for a nice girl. But was my supposedly respectable City job less naughty than the dancers’ seedy ones? It disturbed me to think that strippers mirrored City Girls in ways beyond merely the physical.