![Who would have guessed from looking at this screengrab of Westpac economist James Shugg that he was a $1900-a-day ice addict?](/content/dam/images/g/v/4/t/9/8/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gv4py8.png/1490305084423.jpg)
Hats off to our undisputed person of the week, London-based former Westpac senior economist and regular media commentator, James Shugg.
The enterprising former Aussie bank employee has just copped five years in the slammer after a UK court found that when he wasn't fronting TV cameras and commenting on the movement of markets, he was hosting so-called "chem sex" parties in his West End apartment.
Chem sex parties, for the uninitiated, are full-on bacchanalias in which copious amounts of chemicals are ingested and sex between multiple partners is indulged in. Or so we are told.
According to a report in The Times, the Shuggster (who henceforth shall be known as the Heisenberg of the Australian banking system) had a habit of inviting folk to his apartment and plying them with everything from cocaine to crystal meth and mephedrone – or "miaow miaow" as it's known on the street. Clearly we need to get out more.
Shugg, a Tasmanian native, left the employ of Westpac in mid-2015.
At the time of his arrest, the 53-year-old was servicing a $1900 a week crystal meth habit. Which you'd have to think throws into sharp relief comments he made about the Australian economy back in 2011.
"I've started smoking, I can't get to sleep at night," he reportedly told a conference in Rockhampton. "Markets are freezing up and things are even worse than you are reading about."
He started smoking all right. Except it wasn't Winnie Blues, it was the glass barbecue.