The dastardly Mr Deedes

■ Former chief whip Andrew Mitchell predicts great prosperity in Nigeria. Writing on the Conservative Home website, he calls for a strategic partnership between the UK and Lagos. Doubtless others do too. But Mitchell is a senior adviser to Investec, the South African bank with over $1bn invested in Nigeria. According to the register of MPs’ interests, Investec pays him as much as £15,000 for a day’s work. ‘Thrasher’, 60, is not exactly a disinterested party. ■ TalkTalk’s impish boss Dido Harding describes last year’s disastrous cyberattacks, which cost the firm £60m, as ‘like living in an episode of Spooks’. Harding, particularly regrets appearing in a series of hastily prepared videos during the crisis in which she addressed customers from an empty warehouse. She reflects: ‘I really didn’t look my best, and they look as though I was being held prisoner in a DIY store.’ ■ Entertaining 21st Century Fox mogul Chase Carey’s appointment as chairman of Formula One, part of Liberty Media’s £6bn takeover, should enliven the dull-dog world of motor racing. A beer-swilling sports enthusiast, Carey, 62, also possesses one of the business world’s most hypnotic moustaches. It’s a bushy, down-handlebar number twirled raffishly at each end like a Victorian dandy. He is said to have grown the soup-strainer to conceal a rugby wound from his scrummaging days at Harvard. ■ Restaurateur and clothing tycoon Richard Caring’s lakeside shoot on his Exmoor estate sounds a proper hoot. According to Tatler, guests shoot birds from custom-built pontoons while Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries is blasted from speakers. Meanwhile, Caring eschews the hearty shoot lunch – traditionally claret and casserole and other bracing fare – in favour of a rarefied nosebag prepared by a Japanese-style teriyaki chef. Très comme il faut! ■ Deposed Chancellor George Osborne was spotted lunching with the BBC’s Nick Robinson yesterday at Westminster’s fashionable Cinnamon Club. Robbo was buttering him up in the hope of landing an interview. Osborne hasn’t spoken much since losing the referendum. Everyone’s eager to hear from George why all those Project Fear warnings are yet to come to fruition.