"As I head down to Wall Street, I am a little anxious about which Jim Cramer I'll be dining with today. Will it be the screaming, middle-aged frat boy who whips himself on air when his stock picks fail and throws cream pies at photos of CEOs he thinks should be sacked? Or will it be the Goldman Sachs alumnus, successful hedge fund founder and online business news pioneer who writes a smart finance column in New York magazine?
For today's lunch at Bobby Van's, an old-fashioned steak and seafood joint that is all about men and money, it seems we will be getting Dr Jekyll. Carefully groomed and wearing a dark suit, Cramer is quiet, even courtly. As he ushers me into the glassed-off private room the restaurant has set aside for us, I can't help think of Narnia's Mr Tumnus - the same pointed beard, diminutive stature, graceful manners and, lurking beneath them, an almost childlike sense of mischief.
We start, however, from a darker place. Cramer had recently written a cover story about himself in New York magazine. Even for a man who routinely decapitates dolls in his own image on camera - and at other, cheerier, moments kisses portraits of himself - devoting a whole essay to yourself is an act of enormous, dangerous braggadacio. Cramer pulled it off by starting with a grim question - ''Why does everybody hate me?'' - and concluding with an even bleaker pay-off line: ''I remain completely and utterly repulsive to myself.''
I think it is a fine literary device, but I don't quite believe it. Do you really build an entire TV show around your own manic persona if you find that self repugnant? Before Cramer can properly answer, we are interrupted by our waiter. Cramer greets Alan by name and, after listening to his recitation of the specials, we settle on a seafood platter for two. Daringly, we defy the Manhattan carbohydrate taboo and ask for bread, too.
Then we are back to my guest and his horror of his own on-air antics: ''It's nightmarish for me to watch myself,'' Cramer insists. ''All I do from the moment it starts is say, *How could I have done that?* Don't I have any self-respect?'''
Even if you buy Cramer's shtick about his tortured relationship with himself - and this Woody Allen-esque self-loathing is certainly an essential foil to his show's other excesses and part of what makes it so watchable - it isn't the whole story. For one thing, he is unambivalently proud to have succeeded as a journalist, a career that seems to have more value for him than his previous incarnation as a hedge fund manager.
''I like what I do,'' Cramer says, for a moment sounding absolutely earnest and unconflicted. ''I had done the hedge fund thing. It was fine, but* I always wanted to be a journalist. And I think this is more fun for me now. Everybody's a hedge fund manager. There's not a lot of guys with their own TV shows.''
Part of what motivated Cramer's move is his conviction that his combination of Wall Street pedigree and Animal House slap-stick is the best way to bring the markets - and all the riches he believes they can deliver - to the ordinary guy. Cramer occasionally comes across as the Street's raucous spokesman, as he did in his infamous and, it turns out rather prescient, summertime rant when he called on the Fed to wake up and start cutting rates."