Every Monday (well, most of them) we feature a favourite Alex cartoon selected by our readers. This week’s choice is from 2011.

The evolution of mobile technology was a major theme in the Alex cartoon, from the appearance of the first brick mobile phones, through personal organisers, Palm Pilots (look it up, Gen Z), and BlackBerrys to modern smartphones.

The size and noisiness of the original mobile phones was a good thing as it drew attention to them and indicated to all around that the possessor of such a device was an individual of wealth and status. The function of the phone was to communicate not so much with the person on the other end of the call, so much as with the people in the public space where it was being used. Saying “I’m on the train” in a loud voice on a mobile phone became a meme used by cartoonists (who were neither rich nor important enough to own mobiles themselves). As a gag format it was the "man on a desert island” of its day around the turn of the 21st century and magazines would be full of cartooning variants on this theme: such as a man at a wedding standing on the extension to the bride’s dress and saying into his mobile “ I’m on the train” (OK, we made that particular one up, but we’re sure someone must have done it).

It is fitting that mobiles phones have become smaller over the years as they have become more ubiquitous, because there would be no point in drawing public attention to the fact that you own one in today’s world where everyone else - young and old, rich and poor - does too.

The iPad was launched in 2010, the year before this cartoon appeared. Not only were these new Apple devices sleek and discreet, but with their virtual keyboard they were also totally silent, hence the joke in the cartoon. Even BlackBerrys made a clicking sound when you typed on their physical keys.

The humiliation of being ticked off for a breach of etiquette in a first class carriage, that was once the rightful domain of senior bankers like him, must have signalled to Rupert that his generation’s time was coming to an end. A couple of years after this cartoon appeared he was moved sideways to a non-executive role at Megabank: curating its art collection. This could have been seen as something of a comedown for an ex-head of corporate finance, but the zero interest rate policy brought in after the Global Financial Crisis created an inflation in asset prices, causing the value of art to soar: meaning that Rupert found himself presiding over one of the bank’s most profitable divisions.

There’s a poignant subtext to the cartoon (for us at least) about the decline of print media, the medium for which strip cartoons were originally devised and in which they thrived.

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.