It's so Victorian

Remember Matthew in Anne of Green Gables? And any number of Victorian novels in which ashen faced characters clutch their brows, stagger about and cry, 'The bank has failed! We are ruined!' A useful plot device which I thought had gone for ever.

Whenever our new Chancellor of the Exchequer appears on television, we shout out, 'How's Sybil?' Are we alone in this?