In the summer of 2002, Peter Zahavi Mohammad Barnes disappeared from the face of this earth.

A particularly pleasant poster by the name of sugarbeast set up a thread (epic:pete) asking posters if they'd seen this man. For days and days, people looked high and low, trawling through any stocks which had fallen 50% to see if they could find him. As if by magic, he turned up suddenly in the autumn of 2002, refreshed from a spell in Africa.

Since then, he has come to represent everything that is wrong with the retail investor. We've all made mistakes, but dear old pete specialises in them. Share after share thread saw the legend that is petebarnes ramping away merrily, unaware that he was an idiot.

At first, many people disliked him and his posting style, but eventually, he became an icon of all that is wrong with your typical retail investor. Dislike turned to sympathy, sympathy turned to like, and now like has turned to deification.

In over 50,000 posts on these threads, few are about the legend anymore. Memories are better than the reality.

I list below the cast in this long running North West side story:

sugarbeast; shauna; dell314; jivin jizz;danielk;widemouthfrog...all appeared on the very first thread...only 2 have kept their maiden name.

There then followed luminaries such as the pink pound, bulletproof, mkearns, clerman, rupert bare, neo anderson, james2, tom tit, wal footrot, cfol3 and others who I can't immediately recall.

Why do we do it and what does it achieve ?

Because we can and nothing in particular.

I see Clems not paid the leccy bill again!!

Indeed not, Free L2 tomorrow on its way again ?

Waste of b100dy time imo.