The dastardly Mr Deedes

Spritely undercrackers tycoon Michelle Mone is named in the BBC’s list of 100 ‘inspirational and innovative’ women for 2017, placing the brassy Glaswegian, 45, alongside steely Liberian leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Chile’s trailblazing president Michelle Bachelet. A signal honour for Ellen and Senora Bachelet, no two ways about it.

Boeing’s opportunistic trade dispute with Bombardier, which has resulted in its Canadian rival being slapped with punitive tariffs, now threatens the jobs of some 4,000 UK-based employees. So wasn’t it guileless of Boeing to place a fullpage advert in yesterday’s Financial Times, boasting of ‘growing economic prosperity in the United Kingdom’ and ‘helping to build a stronger UK’. Oily marketing men think these sort of stunts are clever.

Re Bombardier, the firm is now pinning its hopes on several Chinese airline deals which it hopes to tie up when Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau travels to Beijing next month. Trudeau recently sucked-up to Canada’s Indian community by prancing around in a Kurta and went sans-culottes in a kilt to Montreal’s Highland Games. Perhaps the attentionseeking buffoon should don a Fu Manchu moustache and coolie hat to woo Chinese dignitaries.

George Osborne’s ex-chief of staff Rupert Harrison, 38, now an adviser at Blackrock, pays tribute to Germany’s veteran finance minister Wolfgang Schauble, 75, who is standing down after three terms. Harrison recalls: ‘He would always start meetings by saying, “So George, when are you going to join the euro?” Cue general hilarity all round. Then each time it was clear he wasn’t really joking.’ For all his unbecoming Brexit bashing, not even EU-mad George advocated joining the euro.

Goatee-whiskered Aston Martin boss Andy Palmer (no James Bond lookalike, alas) welcomes spindly inventor James Dyson’s plans to move into the electric car market. He jokes: ‘We’re now looking forward to branching out into vacuums.’ An Aston Martin vacuum? That’d clean-up for investors.