Readers of a certain age will be saddened to hear of the terrible financial plight of former DBC Radio personality Betty Bismuth. The 102 year old former family favourite who retired in 1960 and has since been diagnosed with an incurable urge to broadcast [usually via a loud hailer from the garden of her Broadwindsor mansion - a side-effect of an overactive pineal gland] has recently suffered a significant financial hit after investing in the once popular but now largely discredited Crypto-Brian - a token-based exchange “currency” popular amongst those with "more liquidity than common sense" [Dorset Which Crypto-Currency Bulletin, April 2021]*. Friends have said that Ms Bismuth has "recently lost everything - except, that is, her marbles which, truth to tell, she lost some time ago".
* Followers of the printed media will recall that the 2019 edition of Iris Cocksedge’s Iconic Dorset [Allen Iain Publications] wrongly stated that Ms Bismuth had died in 1996 - a mistake which has never been properly explained or corrected. On being told in 2019 that she had died in 1996, Ms Bismuth [known locally by her married name Betty Baxter-Soupe] expressed some surprise as well as an acute sense of relief; the premature announcement of her demise explaining at least to her own satisfaction an otherwise inexplicable diminution in the volume of fan mail she was receiving.
Financial analysts have long expressed concern about the security of the crypto-Brian which, having once reached a pre-Drexit peak of 1CyBr = £5, has fallen back sharply as a result of the collapse of the Chedington Cheese Company - an enterprise on the market performance of which the currency was - with hindsight - critically over-dependent. “Considering matters retrospectively, we should probably have diversified into - say - oat cakes or and/or multigrain cracker thins in order to hedge against changing tastes and to spread the otherwise quite significant risk”, says former CyBr founder and local cheese merchant Wheeler Chedda. Yesterday the crypto currency rallied slightly to stand at 1CyB = 0.001p, making a small slice of mature cave-aged Chedington cheese worth about CyBr 1,250,000 or £12.50 in real money.
Market analysts say Ms Bismuth is not alone in facing financial difficulties as a result of the controversial "currency's" collapse, adding that many celebrities living in the Broadwindsor area [including, allegedly, some "very big names" eg Gladys Bellowes, Clifford Richbone and Myra Thrussock of the Balcombe Veteran Girl Guides Ukelele Novelty Duo] had been drawn into making an ill-fated investment following a rigorous [some say aggressive] door-to-door sales campaign by Mr Chedda’s son Victor Mature-Chedda**.
** Mr Mature-Chedda was trained in the dark arts of heavy-footed doorstepping, fake newspaper production and industrial scale junk-mail saturation techniques when apprenticed to Maurel Higrownd - a local Illiberal-Non-Democrat election agent.
Meanwhile a friend of Ms Bismuth said the not-yet-dead 102 year old was "bearing up", continuing her daily loudspeaker newscasts and acting as though "completely unaware of the dip in her fortunes" as, indeed, she most probably is. A spokesperson for DMoW [Dorset Meals on Wheels added that Ms Bismuth's appetite was also holding up but that she had recently shown a marked aversion to hard cheeses".