Rumours are running riot about the Eurozone; will Germany exit, will one or more of the 'Five Little PIIGS' (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) be cast out?

If only it were that easy!

The Eurozone is a patchwork of political parties, geographies and histories all piled in under one roof - who then decided they would join a single currency and have one Central Bank.

An easy route to help avoid problems, right?

Fat chance.

Greece's (and others) violations of the Eurozone agreement have made a PIIGS ear of the whole thing.

Adding insult to injury is that expulsion or self-imposed exit is technically illegal.

So we decided to draft in our resident expert Blackadder, and his quizzical assistant Baldrick, to help explain the problem in a more coherent and understandable way:

Baldrick: "What I want to know Sir, is before there was a Euro there were lots of different types of money that different people used.

And now there's one type of money that the foreign people use. And what I want to know is, how did we get from one state of affairs to the other state of affairs"

Blackadder: "Baldrick. Do you mean, how did the Euro start?"

Baldrick: "Yes Sir"

Blackadder: "Well, you see Baldrick, back in the 1980's there were many different countries all running their own finances and using different types of money.

On one side you had the major economies of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, and on the other, the weaker nations of Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal.

They got together and decided that it would be much easier for everyone if they could all use the same money, have one Central Bank, and belong to one large club where everyone would be happy.

This meant that there could never be a situation whereby financial meltdown would lead to social unrest, wars and crises".

Baldrick: "But, this is sort of a crisis, isn't it Sir?"

Blackadder: "That's right Baldrick. You see, there was only one slight flaw with The Plan".

Baldrick: "What was that then Sir?"

Blackadder: "It was bollocks!"

Ed Emerson is Editor and Managing Director of HNW Magazine