The dastardly Mr Deedes

Fred Goodwin’s court appearance in June, over claims he misled Royal Bank of Scotland investors in 2008, will be an uncomfortable prospect for the disgraced banker. I wonder if m’learned friends will find relevance to quiz Fred about his much-discussed mistress at the time? The lady in question was a colleague of Goodwin’s at RBS. The lassie’s identity remains guarded by a legal injunction. City minister Simon Kirby – he of the snug-fitting, bovver boy suits – unveiled the Government’s new pensions dashboard tool yesterday at Aviva’s ‘digital garage’. The cavernous laboratory in fashionable Hoxton, London, was teeming with scruffy hipster technicians. Several moons may have passed since any were acquainted with a shower head, let alone a razor. Those who spoke did so into a ball-shaped microphone, which was then lobbed awkwardly between speakers. Stiff-backed Kirby, 52, and his nerdy acolytes looked as comfortable as archbishops at a goth rock concert.

As a Harvard Business school alum■

nus, Tesco’s £4.5m-a-year boss Dave Lewis is fond of a management buzzword or two. No surprise, then, that the announcement of the supermarket’s full-year results yesterday was a hotbed of corporate gibberish. Lewis, 52, said he wanted to make the supermarket ‘more choiceful’. Later, there was also mention of something called ‘customercentricity’. Ugh! No wonder Tesco shareholders are so puzzled by him. Swedish bank Handelsbanken chairman Par Boman, 55, has been questioned in a bribery probe over elk hunting expeditions with other Scandinavian businessmen. Boman rejects the suspicions as groundless. One unamoosed colleague says: ‘This seems like jealousy. Hunting elk has been part of the way Swedish business is done for decades.’ Beats the monotony of golf, I suppose. Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson claims he drinks 20 cups of tea a day to stay energised. Is this possible? Well, Beardie’s never been one to exaggerate, has he?