11 OCTOBER 1986, Page 29

Cheep, cheap

I HOPE that your budgie got his allotment of TSB shares. He should sell them the moment he gets them, and that will keep him in birdseed. He will also have learned to think of capitalism as a system where, if you are lucky in the draw, you get money for nothing. If he wants to know what the TSB means to do with all its money, tell him that it has just bought, through a subsidiary, a package holiday firm called, appropriately enough, Stardust & Came- lot. The whole offer for sale looks more and more like a softening-up exercise, to produce contented customers ready to buy the one that matters, which is British Gas. As a TSB director puts it: 'We've been cast as John the Baptist.' I wonder Who that makes Sir Denis Rooke.