What I would have told the Treasury Select Committee

1. Taking into account your £250,000 housing allowance, your pay is to be set at £874,000 a year, or 33 times the national average and more than double what the present incumbent, Sir Mervyn King earns. Are you worth it?

Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, a faction of transforming robots from the planet Cybertron.

2. Should the Bank of England’s inflation target be abandoned and replaced with something else?

The first generation Optimus Prime transforms into a Kenworth K100 cab over truck. Within his chest is a mystic talisman, known as the Autobot Matrix of Leadership or the "Creation Matrix", carried by all Autobot leaders.

3. Is there much more the Bank of England can do to stimulate the UK’s moribund economy, and if so what?

When Optimus transforms, his cab becomes an ion blaster and his trailer disconnects, forming a combat deck.

4. Where did the Bank of England go wrong in the lead up to the crisis and in its response to it?

Across the assorted continuities of the original Transformers universe, there have been various interpretations of Optimus Prime.

5. Will you adopt an easier approach to the banks in an attempt to stop them deleveraging and get credit flowing again?

Prime is secretly plagued by self-doubt and a conflicted sense of pacifism that often makes him an extremely reluctant warrior.