A senior financial services industry executive was moaning to me the other day about the latest Coronation Street plot line, in which a certain Richard Hillman defrauds, cons and murders his way through the innocent people of Weatherfield.

Hillman is smooth, plausible and - you've guessed it - a financial services salesman. He specialises in selling dodgy mortgage equity release policies to elderly widows. "He confirms everyone's worst suspicions about us," said my friend. "Fifteen million viewers a week see this guy and vow never to trust an independent financial adviser again."

I didn't tell him that the reason no one trusts the financial services industry is not because Vera Duckworth's nest egg is in peril, but because so many people have been fleeced or let down in real life. Pensions mis-selling, endowment mis-selling, imploding split capital investment trusts, the shambles of Equitable Life, spivvy debt consolidation plans . . . the list seems endless.

Unless there is a huge recovery in the stock market in the next six months, another scandal is about to unfold. This time the questionable products are so-called high-income bonds, sometimes called guaranteed high-income bonds. A quarter of a million people have sunk about £5bn into these beasts in the past few years. They promised savers a high yield, sometimes as much as 10 per cent or 20 per cent a year. This sounded marvellous, until one realised that the lump sum invested was not guaranteed. Most investors do not now stand a hope of getting their original capital back.

Were these "bonds" (a meaningless word that salesmen can attach to any old rubbish, yet which punters find reassuring) properly explained? It seems not always. Scottish Widows is already starting to refund some unhappy customers. Jamie MacLeod, managing director of Skandia Investment Management, told a forum of fund managers the other day that the affair was "a rather ugly story about to unfold". For many investors, the penny will drop this summer, when some of the worst of these three-year products start to mature. These were not products just cobbled together by the Richard Hillmans of this world. HSBC, Abbey National, AIG and GE Life were among the big names promoting high-income bonds. Although some investors knew precisely what they were buying, I'm sure many others believed they were somehow like bank accounts, only paying a higher level of interest. The scandal is that the providers called them "guaranteed".

Consumers may have been mugs for buying something offering twice the going interest rate. But the industry knew perfectly well what it was doing.

If you think management consultants have enriched our lives, Marvin Bower is the person to thank. If you think they are merely interfering, overpaid witch doctors, he is the one to blame.

Bower, who has just died at 99, was the leading light behind McKinsey in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, transforming what was a small accountancy practice into the world's most sought-after consulting firm. McKinsey went on to advise 100 of the world's 150 largest corporations. The Bank of England, IBM, General Motors and the Roman Catholic Church were all clients. McKinsey's London office, opened by Bower in 1959, moulded a generation of McKinseyite Brits - from the former Tory leader William Hague to the Financial Services Authority chairman, Sir Howard Davies. But Bower sounds a bit too scrupulous and curmudgeonly for a management consultant. According to his Telegraph obit, at the end of a presentation to one client, he bellowed at the chief executive: "The real problem with this company, Mr Little, is you." McKinsey was promptly fired.

It wouldn't happen now, when the pressure to win fees permeates the entire professional services world.

I'm jealous of Nicholas Vetch, the chief executive of Big Yellow Group, the self-storage company. You may have seen its warehouses dotted about the south-east. Vetch, the company has announced, is taking six months off to travel with his family. He reckons the company can take care of itself in his absence.

Admittedly, it hasn't made a penny profit since he floated it in 2000 and his shareholders have lost 40 per cent of their money. But, he argues, the harsher economic environment means expansion plans have been mothballed, so there won't be much that needs doing. What's more, he promises to "ring in on a weekly basis" from whichever beach he happens to be on. All he asks in return is his director's fee. Oh, and the executive chairmanship when he chooses to come back.

It all sounds eminently reasonable. I'm sure Vetch would offer comparable terms to any of his employees touched with their own bout of wanderlust.

Patrick Hosking is deputy City editor of the London Evening Standard