The dastardly Mr Deedes

the cost of tSB’s recent it meltdown has spiralled to £250m. Meanwhile, the hunt for a successor to Paul Pester, who resigned last month in the wake of the fiasco, has suffered a setback. i’m reliably informed Virgin Money’s Jayne-Anne Gadhia was approached about the vacancy but gave the Bank that Likes to Say Yes a firm ‘No.’ Chirpy Ann Summers boss Jacqueline Gold, daughter of West Ham owner David Gold, spoke movingly on Sunday’s Desert Island Discs about being abused as a teenager. She praised the #MeToo movement for encouraging women to speak out, saying: ‘This has drawn a light on people’s difficulties, it’s important that that happens.’ Will Jacqui, 58, be encouraging her father’s deputy chairman Lady Brady to speak out over recent allegations made against Sir Philip Green? Brady, 49, currently serves as £200,000-ayear chairman of Green’s family holding company Taveta Investments. Apropos the Sir Philip Green saga, Labour firebrand Lord hain felt it was ‘his duty’ to out the topshop tycoon last week under parliamentary privilege. Doubtless this is true, but might his Lordship also have received some prodding at home? hain shares a marital four-poster with Elizabeth haywood, an outspoken feminist and former head of the cBi in Wales. Flinty Lady h is also a member of the influential 30pc club which fights for more female representation on company boards. Soignée Jermyn Street haberdasher Emma Willis’s imaginative charity Style For Soldiers – she accoutres wounded veterans in her stylish designs – hosts an exhibition of soldiers’ work next week at Pall Mall’s La Galleria. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, the charity’s funding predominantly derives from Libor fines issued while George Osborne was chancellor. Who says greedy bankers don’t have uses? Funny chancellor Philip hammond should freeze duty on beer and spirits in the Budget but clobber wine, to which he’s partial. his old school friend Nina Stratford revealed she and Phil once drained a bottle of sherry at his Essex home ‘before having a bit of a cheeky snog’. An enduring image which i’m unable to dispel from my thoughts.