LONDON BRIEFING:LIKE THIEVES in the night, they crept into Portcullis House in Westminster yesterday through a discreet side entrance, avoiding a throng of press, photographers and disgruntled employees.

They had all turned out on a rainy Tuesday morning to witness what had been billed as the “show trial” of the credit crunch – the first public inquisition of the bankers blamed for the calamitous destruction of Britain’s banking industry.

Among the four was Sir Fred Goodwin, aka “Fred the Shred”, so named for the ruthlessness with which he slashed costs and axed staff when he was chief executive of the rapidly- expanding Royal Bank of Scotland. More than any of his peers, Goodwin has come to symbolise the worst excesses and reckless risk-taking that has brought the banking system to the brink of ruin. These days, with his own reputation having been comprehensively shredded, Goodwin is more commonly referred to as the “World’s Worst Banker”.

He was accompanied by his former chairman, Sir Tom McKillop, along with Andy Hornby and Lord Dennis Stevenson, respectively former chief executive and chairman of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).

In their first public outing since quitting their posts in disgrace, the four bankers faced a barrage of hostile questioning from MPs on the Commons treasury select committee, headed by the combative John McFall.

They were swift to express their regret at how things had turned out for their banks. “There’s been a lot of talk about the S-word,” said Stevenson, who went on to declare that he was “profoundly and unreservedly sorry” at the “turn of events”. To varying degrees, his regrets were echoed by his fellow accused.

But the synchronised use of the S-word did not spare them from the barrage of criticism, covering everything from how they failed to see the credit crunch coming, to their huge salaries and bonuses, and their lack of qualifications to do the job.

McFall read out the dictionary definition of a banker, including the bit about safeguarding money, asking whether they thought the definition should now be rewritten. Playing for time, perhaps, they asked their inquisitor to repeat the definition.

As the hearing went on, it became clear that the four had been well-briefed on how to withstand the encounter.

Some of the accusations hit the mark, but the inquisitors let themselves down with the quality of their supplementary lines of inquiry, effectively allowing the bankers off the hook.

Perhaps aware of that, McFall and his team did attempt a dramatic flourish yesterday. They produced a written submission from a former HBOS employee, Paul Moore, who claimed to have warned that the bank was growing too fast, and who described former chief executive Sir James Crosby as the “original architect” of the flawed strategy.

It was a nice touch – having a whistleblower up your sleeve undoubtedly adds to the drama, particularly when the whole encounter is being played out in front of the TV cameras. But the dramatic effect yesterday was somewhat spoiled by the fact that Moore has blown his whistle once before, several months ago.

He spoke for the first time last October, when he revealed on the BBC Money Programme’s credit crisis special that he had first warned about the bank’s excessive risk-taking culture back in 2004.

A former head of regulatory risk at the bank, Moore was the most senior manager in charge of regulatory compliance at HBOS between 2002 and 2004.

He left, or was sacked, in 2004 but, he says, not before warning senior colleagues on more than one occasion that the bank had become dominated by a sales culture at the expense of risk management.

So, after three hours of questioning, what did we discover?

That the bankers – and there are more due before the committee this afternoon – are all very, very sorry; that the record-breaking £50 billion (€56.3 billion) acquisition of ABN Amro was a “bad mistake”; and that they sometimes did not understand the full complexities of the financial instruments used by their banks.

As they left Westminster yesterday lunchtime after the hearing, the bankers were no doubt thinking it could have been a whole lot worse. There were some uncomfortable moments, but they were not given anything like the kicking most shareholders or employees would have wished.

In the end, they were not roasted, but grilled – and lightly grilled at that.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London