THE promoters of ostrich farming promised that the business of rearing and breeding these ill tempered birds would provide investors with a cash crop for the 1990s. Instead, unlike the bird itself, it was investors capital that took flight and may never be recovered. This week a London High Court plucked the final feathers from the carcass of the discredited Ostrich Farming Corporation.

In ordering the company to be wound up, Mr Justice Lightman said the debacle warranted an independent investigation into the shadowy and dubious individuals" involved.

The judge was scathing in his criticism of what he termed "a fashionable device for the fleecing of investors", saying that everything about the company was "redolent of wrongdoing". Millions of pounds of investors' money was improperly diverted and he called for action to assist "hapless investors", some of whom are Irish.

The OFC, set up in 1994, promised to provide birds and chicks to the public and maintain them at its farm in Belgium, but had no precise means of determining which birds belonged to individual investors or which to breeding ostriches.

The company, which at its peak was taking in over £4 million a month, was judged to be essentially a pyramid sales scheme, dependent on a constant cash stream and ultimately doomed to meet its ongoing liabilities. All of which supports the old aphorism governing any financial investment. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.