Scottish Daily Mail

The dastardly Mr Deedes

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Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson’s public rubbishing of Jeremy Corbyn’s claim he couldn’t find a seat on one of his trains was typical, bombastic Beardie. Compare his ‘look-at-me’ behaviour with his British Airways rival, Willie Walsh, who steered well clear of our Olympians returning from Rio on Monday via a BA flight. Dublin-born Willie, 54, is an unpretenti­ous sort with little appetite for public relations. Awkward and softly spoken, it’s said he doesn’t even employ a personal assistant. Droll detail on embattled Deutsche Bank, gleaned from this month’s New Yorker. When American bankers began arriving at the firm’s London offices towards the end of the 90s, German managers erected office signs which spelt out ‘Deutsche’ phonetical­ly. Dim-witted Yanks had been pronouncin­g it ‘Douche Bank’. Glencore’s South African boss Ivan Glasenberg announces the firm is stepping up the pace in its debt reduction plan, aiming to have it down to £12.5bn by the end of the year. Nasal-voiced Ivan, 59, has done plenty of ‘stepping up’ in his time. He was a race walker in his youth and was devastated to miss the 1984 Olympics when he and his compatriot­s were barred over apartheid. Consolingl­y, he embarked on a career in min- ing instead, netting a £1.25bn fortune. Visitors to the Financial Times’ website are now treated a ‘pop-up’ greeting from haughty editor Lionel Barber, 61, on their screens. He appears in full-length form, but with his recently awarded Legion d’Honneur medal disappoint­ingly absent from his lapel. Perhaps the FT’s boffins in IT can Photoshop it in at a later date. In the meantime, my own eggheads have installed a ‘Barber-blocker’ to prevent any further intrusions. Former stockbroke­r Johnnie Boden, who is now the £300m boss of the Sloaney mail order clothing firm, allows his well-heeled customers to choose from a drop-down menu of 52 titles including squadron leader, general, field marshal lord, rear admiral, the duke of, the duchess of, prince, princess, the marquess of, the marchiones­s of, the earl of, the countess of, viscount and viscountes­s. But he omits ‘prime minister’, even though David Cameron was a devotee of his bathing trunks. Perhaps that would have been showboatin­g.

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