Every Monday (well, most of them) we feature a favourite Alex cartoon selected by our readers. This week’s choice is from 1987.

This week’s suggestion comes courtesy of Piers Watson from Sydney, who, like many of our readers, seems to have a penchant for our cartoons from the late 1980s (which may tell us something about our fanbase’s age profile). Unlike many Alex strips from that era though, this one has not dated. The hairstyles, the clothes, the attitudes and the size of mobile phones may give away the decade such cartoons appeared in, yet the chattering-classes conversation depicted here is still heard on a daily basis in middle-class dining rooms across the south of England (though obviously with some zeros added to the house prices being discussed).

Many of the people seated round the table would have been major deal-makers in the City, but the most profitable trade they ever did in their careers was probably in their mid-20s when they bought the modest starter flat in London that got them on the property ladder. This was a business deal which required no insight or specialised knowledge. You borrowed money to purchase something which then increased rapidly in value, seemingly for ever. It’s hard to think of another asset that you could buy and make use of every day, which would end up being worth vastly more than you paid for it: apart from maybe a Stradivarius violin (though most of us wouldn’t be able to afford one of those, let alone have the skill to play it). These Baby Boomers (yes, it’s the usual suspects) took all the credit for their financial acumen, although the only skill involved was having been in the right place at the right time. But the quality that Napoleon supposedly prized highest in his generals was luck.

What these smug financial professionals probably didn’t understand was that the property market is driven by banks creating brand-new money to issue mortgages. This floods the housing market with new purchasing power, which pushes property prices upwards, causing people to need more and bigger mortgages to keep up, thus inflating the profits of banks and allowing them to issue even more massive loans and so forth.. As for the answer to the question of how long it can go on for: it’s thirty-nine years (and counting) since this cartoon appeared.

Dinner parties were a staple of middle-class social life in the 1980s. You could invite all your friends round to your small flat in Clapham, which you had painted in Racing Green with hunting prints on the wall to pretend you lived in the country, and use the opportunity to boast about how rich and successful you were. Nowadays of course we do that sort of showing off on social media instead. But at least with social media you can choose to turn off your phone, whereas back in the 80s when you went to a dinner party you were stuck there until coffee was served.

Amid the Armani suits and Princess Di hairstyles, Penny emerges as the voice of sanity, who delivers the punchline. Come to think of it she was probably the only sane character in the whole Alex strip.

If you’ve got any suggestions for a favourite cartoon for future inclusion please email us. And do tell us if there’s a particular reason why it appealed to you.