The dastardly Mr Deedes

Lloyd’s of London boss Inga Beale quietly collected her DBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace last week. A kindly, unassuming figure, £1.5m-a-year Dame Inga opted for a private investiture, meaning her appointment at the palace wasn’t publicised. Perhaps flirty designer Victoria Beckham, who now touts herself as a serious businesswoman, will show similar reticence when she gets round to picking up her OBE for ‘services to fashion’. Struggling Deutsche Bank laid off 150 staff in its fixed income division yesterday. Couldn’t the mass sackings have been arranged sooner? With a number of staff off last week due to school half-term, they would have preferred not to have had to return to the office just to face the bullet. Journalists wanting to report on O2’s latest quarterly results had to trudge down to a remote conference centre in London’s Greenwich last night. The mobile network did at least make it worth their while. Hacks were then whisked away to O2’s nearby arena for a night of restrained revelry at the Brit Awards. Rothschild banker-turned-French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron must sometimes regret leaving the cosseted world of high finance. New Statesman editor Jason Cowley describes seeing diminutive Monsieur Macron, 39, in Westminster this week being ‘hurried off for a meeting with Philip Hammond, pursued by the journalist Robert Peston’. Dogged by torrid rumours of a gay affair, hasn’t the poor man suffered enough? Re Hammond, next month’s budget promises to be the usual dull dog affair. Chancellor Hammond could enliven things a tad by reviving the bygone tradition of enjoying a sharpener at the dispatch box. Ken Clarke liked to address the Commons with a glass of malt whisky. Geoffrey Howe sipped gin and tonic. I suspect an hour of ‘Box office Phil’ droning on might have us all reaching for the hard stuff.