We weren’t there during the discussions, those long and important discussions, between Alistair Darling and the chief executives of some of Britain’s largest banks.

Contacting all 60 million of us would have been difficult, but some of us might like to have been invited. Partly because, as British taxpayers, we were about to make a rather large investment; partly because those meetings sound like a curious inversion of reality.

There sat the bankers, nervously shuffling their feet, while on the other side of a large, hard, wooden desk was every British taxpayer, regarding them sceptically.

“What kind of business are you running anyway?” we might have asked. “A bank, eh? And you really expect it to make money?”

We were being asked to put in £50 billion. Now is the time for each of us to ask ourselves whether this represents a sensible investment. It is all very well ensuring the survival of the British banking system and the future of capitalism as we know it, but what will we get out of it? More of those ball-point pens that stop working within 24 hours?

Would we be better off putting the money in an Isa, or one of those index-linked things, or those bonds with the gilt edges that sound like pieces of Edwardian furniture?

No one has yet issued a glossy leaflet explaining the deal in bold-type bullet points, for us to spill coffee on and then place in a drawer and forget about, but apparently we will be getting preferential shares.

At least we might be getting them, if banks decide they need the money. Which it seems that they do.

These shares are preferential because the holder receives special treatment, ahead of the ordinary shareholders. Rather like first-class air passengers, we get served before everyone else and if the plane goes down we are nearer the exit. Preferential shareholders get a fixed interest rate on the money they have invested, and we must be paid this before any of the ordinary shareholders have been paid a dividend. We come first.

Equally, if, heaven forfend, the bank goes down, we can attempt to claw back our investment from what remains, after the debtors have been paid but before those ordinary shareholders get a look in.

There is, of course, a risk that this happens and we lose the money. But there is also what we on our first-class flight deck, might call “an upside”.

The preferential shares we buy may be “convertible preference shares”. At some point in the future we can convert them into ordinary shares at a favourable price. Apparently shares can go up as well as down. Equally, our shares might have a warrant attached, the option to buy new shares at an attractive preagreed price.

If the banks’ share prices have bounced back to what they once were, back before all this chaos began, we will be like so many fat-cat City executives, ready to cash in our share options, make a killing and retire to a nice house in West Sussex.

Or to pay off long-term government borrowing, which does not sound quite as nice. Still, the principle is the same.

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