I am going to the Edinburgh Fringe this August to do one of my comedy lectures. This one is about gold: its history, its fascination, its future. It really is the most amazing metal, not least because it is, as Spandau Ballet famously sung, indestructible. Life may be temporary, but gold is permanent.
No other substance is as durable – not diamonds, not tungsten carbide, not boron nitride. You can shape this enormously ductile metal into virtually anything. An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long. You can beat it into a leaf just
