Do you think there was anybody actually on the phone or was “The Banker” actually just Noel Edmond’s talking to himself like a maniac?

The banker is a mysterious man who Noel met at his lowest ebb. Noel's House Party had ended and he'd gone from the man who had it all to the man who lost it all. Something spoke to Noel in that time. He hopped on a plane to Mexico and went walkabout in the deserts to the north of the country. He ended up taking peyote and wandering around the land weeping "It's over, it's over." Night fell and the stars wheeled overhead. Noel felt as though he was no longer in the present. For a time he thought that he was walking in the land thousands of years ago when it was still young and new. He could have sworn that he saw a trail of figures, the first settlers to ever set foot on this land, walking through the night, heads bowed, but he feared to speak to them. Then he felt as though he was existing outside of time. It was then that he fully understood - whatever I have lost, I still have so much. And now he thought that was gone as well. he thought that he was trapped outside of time. "I want to go back," he wailed into the darkness, "Please, please, I just want to go back." And then, in that moment of brooding silence that followed, a hand reached out to him from the darkness and a voice - like none that had ever been heard before - spoke to him. "Take my hand, Noel. We have work to do." "Who are you? How - how do you know my name?" The man laughed - a sound both terrible and beautiful that made Noel quiver with fear and wonder. "All shall be revealed, my friend. Come, now. Enough of this. the land of the living beckons to you." And Noel closed his eyes, reaching out to take the man's hand. He felt it - cold and strange - and when he opened his eyes he was back in the empty desert and there was no one to be seen. All that was left in his hand was a piece of paper with a phone number on it. "What if -" he said to himself, "what if the people start the game with their prize and we try to buy it from them?" he shook his head, "no. That's crazy. That'll never work. Unless...." And slowly the plan came together. When he had walked back to civilisation he called the number. The voice he had heard before - a time that already seemed like aeons ago, ages of the earth ago - spoke to him "You shall call me. You shall call me when the game is played. You understand now, of course?" Noel nodded to himself. "I - I understand." And that was how Deal or No Deal was born and Noel met The Banker.