The astardly Mr Deedes

Sports Direct’s only female board member, Claire Jenkins, resigned yesterday after six years with the scandal-ridden company. In a terse statement, Sports Direct announced that Jenkins, a former stockbroker, was standing down ‘with immediate effect’. No initial public words of thanks from puggish boss Mike Ashley. Nor were there any platitudes from sober-looking Jenkins. How much should we read into that? ‘Rather a lot,’ I am advised. JP Morgan recently paid Nick Clegg £22,500 for delivering a speech at its Canary Wharf offices. The bank paid George Osborne over £140,000 last year for two speeches in New York. Presumably it is to garner political insight, but don’t JP already pay Tony Blair £2m a year for this sort of drivel? Manchester’s Lowry Hotel has been sold by American firm Westmont Hospitality to Asian investors CDL Trusts for £52.9m. No doubt the new owners were drawn to the five- star haunt’s popularity with Manchester United footballers. In 2010, it served as the backdrop for Wayne Rooney’s romantic liaisons with a £1,200-anight prostitute nicknamed ‘Juicy Jeni’. Here’s a fun one for the diary. Next Thursday, public relations man Richard Hillgrove hosts a breakfast in Mayfair to discuss his lively career, in which he’s represented Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne and saturnine advertising mogul Charles Saatchi. Hillgrove, 45, an erratic Kiwi with a red Garibaldi beard and ten-gallon hat, sportingly promises to ‘reveal all’ about this notoriously sensitive duo. Can’t wait! Philip Hammond can testify to Theresa May’s boasts of being a ‘doorstep campaigner’. Not long after entering 11 Downing Street, the Chancellor received an unexpected phone call one Saturday morning from the Prime Minister, informing him that she wanted to do some doorknocking in his Runnymede and Weybridge constituency. Hammond’s majority in this leafy Surrey stockbroker enclave? A thumping 22,134.