Greed is good again. It’s early Saturday morning in a glum and airless back room of a Holiday Inn in London. ‘Raise your hand if you’d like to make some money this morning!’ says Chloë Bisson, ‘#1 Bestselling Author, Multi-Award Winning Entrepreneur, International Speaker’. People go ‘yep’ and ‘uh-huh’ and ‘too right’ and put their hands in the air. Chloë’s colleague Ryan Pinnick comes on stage next. ‘Who’s ready for the formula?’ he asks. He tells everyone to stand up and chant: ‘Show – me – the money! Show – me – the money!’ It’s as if we’ve been transported back to the 1980s.

All the speakers here sell online courses that will supposedly help you escape your nine-to-five and achieve ‘financial freedom’. After Chloë and Ryan comes Rob Moore, wearing a black and sequinned Alexander McQueen blazer. He begins by saying that it’s not a sin to want money – a kind of Gordon Gekko pastiche. ‘I’m going to hell and I’m f-ing rich,’ he tells us. He writes ‘HOW TO GET F-ING RICH’ across two big whiteboards.

‘The universe will give you the money next week… or maybe the week after’

Rob is aggressive, looks people in the eye and varies his tone like a man well trained in public speaking – but his business advice comes in self-evident banalities. You want a ‘low-cost, high-speed’ company, with ‘low stock, low overheads’. ‘You might want to write this down,’ Rob says, and the crowd do what they’re told. He has more than a million followers on social media, and a crazed, cult-leader way about him.

‘Give me some bosoms to nuzzle in!’ he says between bits of business talk. ‘I can say what I want! Tits, cock, bollocks! I’m uncancellable!’ Before lunch, he says: ‘If you want me to sign your breasts, I’m going to be here.’ Rob sells the chance to become one of his ‘mentees’, and he gives cash to members of the audience who please him. One man gets a £50 note for bringing Rob a glass of water. This whole weekend is really one big sales pitch – you purchase the speakers’ products at the back of the room.

‘Get rich quick’ schemes in the 21st century differ from the 20th-century versions in one respect. A few decades ago achieving ‘financial freedom’ just meant not having to worry about money. (‘Imagine always being able to have all the things you and your family deserve,’ said the narrator of an old infomercial.) Today’s ‘financial freedom’ is about freedom from the state as well.

The British government is trying to ‘indoctrinate’ the population through state schooling, says Rob, and the ‘system’ is trying to enslave people by putting them in debt. The NHS is a bonfire of taxpayer money, too. Did you know 30 per cent of your taxes go on that broken healthcare apparatus? Rob says the rich avoid paying tax, have private health and don’t rely on state education – they escape the curses of a normal life.

This messed-up Britain sells. During a break, one man says he’s bought eight or nine training courses from people like Rob, but they haven’t made him millions yet. He wants to hear the speakers out – only this time he’s left his credit card at home to stop himself buying anything. The crowd are old and young and come from everywhere in the country, but they’re all desperate for money.

One sixth-former here wants to earn enough cash to get out of the UK. She doesn’t want to be enslaved by our system – she wants a ‘passive income’ from renting houses so she can move to Bali or somewhere and become a financially free digital nomad. Another man bought a house in the north, did it up, refinanced and bought another place. He’s repeated this over and over, and now he’s leveraged up to the eyeballs. One blip in the housing market will probably bankrupt him.

Aside from the conspiracies, the weekend sales puff is unchanged since the infomercial days. A few decades ago the American Don Lapre sold courses on how to get rich from ‘tiny classified ads’. One of his marketing videos was a staged conversation with the model Cindy Margolis. Don was once stuck in a small apartment and painted houses for a living, but then he got rich and could speak to nice, attractive women. ‘I can’t believe it took meeting you for me to realise how much money I could be making,’ Cindy swooned. ‘It’s that easy!’

On the Sunday at the Holiday Inn, the ‘Online Education Entrepreneur’ Paul O’Mahony comes on stage. He levels with the audience that he used to be poor and tens of thousands of pounds in debt, but following a ‘four-step system’ helped him build a £60 million fortune. Every couple of sentences he asks: ‘Does that make sense?’ The audience says it does, even though Paul never explains what the four steps are.

By the close of the weekend, there’s little technique to the selling. Paul slashes his prices by 80 per cent, and gives his course a hard push. It’s cheap if you prorate the cost: ‘You are literally half a cup of coffee per day away from financial freedom for the rest of your life!’ He reassures the crowd: ‘I’m a qualified financial adviser.’

Rob also comes back on Sunday afternoon. ‘The only thing that is stopping you is a little bit of money,’ he says, ‘which you can afford.’ He pushes harder, invoking the supernatural, borrowing from the evangelical hucksters: ‘The universe will give you the money next week… or maybe the week after.’ Attendees nod, stand up, walk to the back of the room and start spending.