Easy ways of getting an answer to the question ‘Is the credit crunch here to stay?’ include measuring the breadth of litigators’ smiles or charting the rise in Tetris-playing skills among the associates twiddling their thumbs in finance.

Bored associates at one City firm last week found a novel way to keep themselves amused, involving a tape measure – and not in the ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ way you’d expect of, say, investment bankers. Well, sort of.