After months of dragging oil prices the capital of North Sea oil is caught in the grip of a vicious downturn which has wrought financial pain throughout the local economy. Dips are to be expected of a city so deeply dependent on the fluctuating price of oil, but the latest downturn is unlike anything its 195,000 residents have seen before.

The oil price rout has run deeper and longer than any oil market downturn in history, and comes at a time when the aging North Sea basin is losing its economic edge against cheaper exploration areas.

As the economic contagion spreads through Aberdeen, so do the anecdotes of its fall from one of the richest cities in the UK to a city in crisis.

Tales of oil executives queuing up for food banks or to sell their Rolexes to overwhelmed pawn brokers are breathlessly repeated by cab drivers. One tells of how financed sports cars are being abandoned in dealership forecourts overnight by those unable to keep up with payments. Another claims to have driven an enterprising young man to snap up a paid-in-full Porsche from a desperate owner to re-sell at a profit in London.