Should we weep or cheer that the Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley brands are receiving corporate euphanasia at the hands of their Spanish owner Santander?

There will inevitably be sadness that names that have been around so long are being killed off without sentiment like so many unwanted kittens.

For those of us of a certain vintage, "Get the Abbey Habit" is as much part of our televisual growing up as "Only Here for the Beer" or "Tell 'Em About the Honey Mummy." But that does not justify Abbey's continued existence. In all probability these three former building socities signed their own death warrants the  very second their boards decided that life as a stick-in-the-mud worthy mutual was too dull and the racy, world of the stock market was the future.

In many repects it is far harder to work up any regret about the passing of a bank.  Alliance & Leicester affords far less emotion than a fondly remembered sweet. I still talk about Opal Fruits and Marathon bars like an old bore who insists on translating decimal prices into pounds, shilling and pence. But who still thinks of HSBC as Midland Bank? Nobody, except perhaps the former chief executive.

HSBC is infact a good example of how the waters close over dying brands very quickly. Can anyone other than a banking anorak (not someone I'd want to be sat next to at a wedding) now remember Midland's logo (a griffin) and slogan ("the listening bank"). Indeed HSBC has had a good credit crunch, its size and conservatism standing it in good stead in difficult times. Santander may be foreign and unfamiliar to us now.

But in five years time we will in all probability have forgotten why we ever got the Abbey habit and who on earth were poor Messrs Bradford and Bingley (deceased).

Three big banking names to be wiped off high street