Performer Dines Out on Fake-Check Tale for 10 Years

As people turn against the bankers they blame for the financial crisis, it’s difficult to say whether Patrick Combs captured the moment or the moment captured him.

Since 2002, the once-struggling San Francisco-based author has taken his one-man show about how he cashed a junk-mail check for $95,093.35—and the ensuing fight with his bullying bank—to audiences from Dallas to Dublin. With every year that’s gone by, the banking community’s problems have given Combs’s Man 1, Bank 0 more legs and made it more lucrative to him than the check.