back to the futures

And up to a point you would be right. And wrong. Cohen is a merchant banker, but no ordinary one. Cohen (cue scary music from Tales from the Crypt, better still, Bank Vault) works for Barings. The bank that bore Nick Leeson, the rogue trader, has now unleashed the rogue writer.

In Brass Monkeys, his first novel published this month, Cohen, who was born in Glasgow, takes less than a page to rid the world of the Cabinet at the Euro Millennium Tower disaster when the #2.5bn Euro building collapses during the inauguration ceremony.

A linguistic cock-up on the pan-European architect's committee - just one of the theories - it leaves the stage set for an anarchic, irreverent Tom Sharpe-style romp through the fields of politics and the media with murder, mayhem and extremely salacious sexual shenanigans.

In the accident-prone government of Edward Burgins, Ministers drop like (trouser) flies leaving arch rivals Hugh Driftwood, the up and coming youngest member of the new Cabinet, and Alistair Sloach, the doctor at the end of his spin cycle, to slug it out to see who takes over as Prime Minister.

Driftwood is backed by stepmother Venessa and her rash of tabloids - when they are not trying to humiliate rival media mogul, Victor ''News is Crap'' Quistling. And all goes swimmingly for Mr Driftwood until he is sucked into a political sex scandal by the pillar box lips of Ros Flato . . .

It is a riot of laughs, not quite the behaviour of a bloke from Barings. Cohen, however, disagrees. ''I think you'd be surprised at how funny a lot of City people are in the privacy of their own offices. It's a kind of street humour one comes across there. It took me a while to adjust to that.''

The surprise also extends to his CV. Born in Merrylee, Cohen attended Glasgow High before graduating from Heriot Watt with a honours degree in interpreting and translating. He then gained valuable experience between 1981 and 1983 as

a research assistant for Labour MP, Grenville Janner, before moving to the City to work for Baring Brothers. He survived the infamous crash of 1995 and today is a director with Baring Asset Management.

''I started to focus on the idea for a novel in Westminster in the early 1980s,'' says Cohen, who is 38.

''The specific germ came from watching MPs do radio interviews down the telephone line from their offices. I remember watching one MP talking about weighty matters while making faces the whole time. Nobody knew what he was doing. That developed in my mind into one of the themes which then evolved into the book.''

He is highly flattered that publishers Hodder & Stoughton have chosen to compare him to Tom Sharpe on the jacket of the novel. ''I love Sharpe's work. But I think it would be very presumptuous to compare myself to him. I wouldn't do that. His stuff is much more satirical. I'm just trying to write a light comic novel.

''His has more depth and he makes interesting points about middle class existence which I'm not trying to do. Mine is more sucking than biting satire.''

Time spent in the Commons is remembered with great fondness, a fondness which does not include taking tea with Mrs T. He says: ''As Grenville's assistant I went for afternoon tea with Mrs Thatcher in Downing Street. I was really looking forward to it. It was a small gathering.

''Unfortunately I hadn't reckoned on the fact I was a research assistant to a Labour MP. As soon as she found out she completely ignored me. Her laser eyes drove right through me and we didn't exchange too many words.''

But for a would-be comic writer it was a fund of potential material. ''One day I was going to eat in the Strangers cafeteria. Grenville buttonholed me and asked me to look after this chap because he had to go off and vote.

''He'd obviously come from abroad and I chatted to him for a minute or two. It was small talk. I asked where he was from. He said India. I said that's very nice. I asked him how long he was over here for. I then asked what he did and he said, 'I'm the Foreign Minister'. After that the conversation dried up. It was very embarrassing.''

He also recalls how a renowned Scottish professor travelled south to deliver a lecture to MPs on industrial safety. ''I rang round all the members of the august industrial safety committee to make sure they were coming, but in the evening no-one turned up. The poor chap had obviously worked at length on his speech.

''We ran around looking for people and were reduced to trying to persuade a Commons cleaner to come and listen. But even he decided he had better things to do. The professor read his speech to an audience of two. Next day we issued a press release. His speech was quite widely reported and everyone was happy.''

Today the fun is in the writing, despite the fact he has to get up at 5.30am to fit it into a hectic schedule. Weekends too find him at his computer at his home in north-west London. A single man, his affair with words began on his mother's knee. Evelyn Cowan (she kept her maiden name for writing) was president of the Glasgow Writers' Club for four years and published two books, Portrait of Alice, and A Spring Remembered, the story of her Jewish childhood in the Gorbals in the 1920s and 1930s.

Cohen says: ''I remember sitting on her knee when I was three with a toy typewriter. She died a few months ago, but she got a lot of satisfaction from the fact that I had made it into print. She never saw the final book, but saw a proof copy in the Victoria Infirmary just before she died.''

Cohen is the first to admit the novel is salacious. ''Very salacious,'' he says. ''My mother was quite unperturbed by it. I was more apprehensive about her reading it and kept warning her in advance it was going to be quite a dirty book.

''In the event she was offended that I thought she would be shocked by it. She enjoyed it and laughed a lot.''

But what of his colleagues at the bank? ''I don't think many have read it yet but they have a good idea what it's about and have been very supportive. I was quite worried about how they would be. But so far they have been excited. I keep getting stopped at the lift and asked when can they buy it. Their reaction has been gratifying.''

He is now working on his second book - about a merchant bank which experiences a disaster on the futures market. It is comic fiction, but Cohen watched centre stage as the real drama of the 1995 crash unfolded.

''It was quite scary but also quite fascinating. I remember thinking at the time that I'm probably going to lose my job and come out with nothing, not even a redundancy payment. But if it's going to happen I may as well enjoy the experience. I watched the world's press camp outside the door as a tidal wave swept over everyone.

''Quite a number of us camped out in the office for the weekend without going home at all. It was a very thrilling weekend and I even got to say 'no comment', which is something I had always wanted to do.

''However, any resemblance between the book and Barings is coincidental. The plot is different. It involves a murder mystery and more sexual shenanigans. The publishers insisted upon them.''

Cohen hopes to have it finished by September to coincide with a film about Nick Leeson and starring Scottish actor Ewan McGregor.

Ultimately, he would love to become a full-time writer. ''It obviously depends on how successful the two books are. It has been my ambition ever since childhood

and one day I would like to part company

on very good terms with Barings. But that's some way down the road.''

However, maybe it is not as far as he thinks. In his first novel, Cohen displays an explosive touch. It was another thing that he learned from

his mother.

''She went off to write, leaving a steam pudding on the gas cooker. She forgot

about it, it hit the ceiling and practically incinerated the kitchen,'' he says.

If Butchers Ball, a working title for his second book, goes with a similar bang, one big wheel could soon part company with

its Baring.

l Brass Monkeys is published by Hodder & Stoughton at #16.99