The dastardly Mr Deeles
Former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn is said to have blown his chances of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve after criticising Donald Trump’s handling of the recent violence in Charlottesville. Trump now ‘visibly bristles’ whenever his economic adviser’s name is mentioned. Meanwhile, Cohn’s old boss, Lloyd Blankfein, gives a none-too-effusive endorsement of his ex-deputy’s candidacy, saying: ‘No one’s perfect, but he’s the best I know.’ A nest of vipers, isn’t it?
Wetherspoon’s rampantly anti-EU publican Tim Martin, 62, compares the Financial Times’ ‘We’re all doomed’ attitude towards Brexit to cynical TV character Blackadder. If the FT’s esteemed editor Lionel Barber is the show’s hapless protagonist, he says, then its economics commentator Martin Wolf is surely his dim-witted dogsbody, Baldrick. Such insolence! These two lofty paragons of integrity should withdraw patronage from Martin’s establishments forthwith.
BHS’s Oxford Street store was reopened by Kate Moss this week for the launch of Polish fashion label Reserved. Time was when the evergreen supermodel, 43, performed stunts like this for the store’s previ- ous owner, Sir Philip Green. But like many of Sir Philip’s celebrity pals, relations appear to have cooled since his stint as public enemy number one.
Apple will launch the iPhone 8 next Tuesday in the Steve Jobs Theater, a 1,000-capacity building situated in its £3.8bn, GCHQ-style headquarters in Silicon Valley. The state-of-the-art venue is attracting almost as much intrigue among devoted geeks as the new handset. The auditorium’s leather seats alone are said to have cost £10,000 a pop.
Final yarn on Sir David Tang, the fizzy entrepreneur who passed away last week aged 63. The Spectator’s Martin Vander Weyer recalls interviewing him at his Belgravia home, where Sir David was waxing on the importance of cash flow. An embarrassingly timed phone call then came through from his bank manager, informing him he’d exceeded his credit limit. ‘Bad night at Aspinalls,’ muttered ‘Tango’, a fixture at the high rollers-only Mayfair casino.