… a life lesson learned from an article I read in Vanity Fair about the wealthy victims of Bernie Madoff and his associates in America.  The article is recommended for the sound of outraged rich people coming, shrilly, to the realisation that bad things can happen to them too.  Along with some fab bitchiness from the heights of US society, the article points out the danger of having all your eggs in one basket.  The people who were financially wiped out were the ones who trusted Madoff with everything they had rather than spreading the risk.   In freelance terms that’s the same as allowing yourself to be dependent on one client for too much work.  I got burned that way before when I was doing almost all my work for a part of Channel 4 which disappeared in an unexpected corporate restructure.  The realisation has hit recently that this concentration of work is happening again, although as the market shrinks the possibilty of spreading the risk is less than it used to be.  I will, however, do my best to diversify, otherwise I might end up having to sell the furs and the jewels and give up the membership of the Palm Beach country club…