I am very upset on behalf of Sir Edward Elgar.
He is being off-loaded from the back of the £20 note in favour of economist Adam Smith.
There was great celebration in Worcester, my home city, when Elgar was chosen some years ago - not least by the people whose house features on the design, sitting next to Worcester cathedral.
You may say, who cares who is featured on the back of a banknote?
Well, to put it into perspective, Elgar is Worcestershire’s Lennon and McCartney.
To add insult to injury, next year is the 150th anniversary of his birth, with celebrations a plenty in the pipeline all over Britain - including, incidently, Liverpool where the Phil has a whole box of delights in its 2007 programme.
So who is this man who has helped junk Britain’s most celebrated composer?
Admittedly Smith's work helped to create the economics taught in schools and universities, and provided one of the best-known rationales for free trade and capitalism.
But funnily enough the 18th century economist, who wrote The Wealth of Nations and advocated a free market guided by an ‘invisible hand’, also came from the same Scottish city as Gordon ‘just call me Prime Minister’ Brown.
An enigma variation? Or yet more pomp and circumstance.
