All Intensive Purposes

The Financial Times' David Wighton has lunch with Maria Bartiromo.

Bartiromo started receiving e-mails from someone calling himself Joey Ramone in 1998. Unsurprisingly, she was at first sceptical that it was the Joey Ramone. The e-mails would say things like: "Maria, I saw you on CNBC today, and you were talking about Intel. I own Intel but I feel they're losing market share to AMD. Call me. Joey Ramone." Could this really be the man responsible for such classics as "Sheena is a Punk Rocker", "Teenage Lobotomy" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue"?

"I finally e-mailed him back, and it was him, and we started having this great friendship about the markets. He was so informed and so intelligent about the markets. A really good investor."

But, for Ramone, there was clearly more than the markets to the friendship because when his solo album appeared shortly after his death from cancer in 2001, it included a love song entitled "Maria Bartiromo". The uncharacteristically lyrical number's chorus goes: "I watch you on the TV every single day./Those eyes make everything okay./I watch her every day./I watch her every night./She's really outta sight."

"After he passed away, so many of the band members and friends called me and said: 'Joey loved you.'"

By the way, she had the Dover sole and he had the veal ravioli.