The dastardly Mr Deedes
John Lewis’s £1.5m-a-year managing director Andy Street will reportedly stand for the Conservatives as Mayor for West Midlands. His candidacy will be a boon for Theresa May. Birmingham-born Street, 53, a cadaverous, but spritely sort of fellow, is permanently fizzing with ideas. Will his longstanding friend, luxuriantly-haired Staffordshire MP Michael Fabricant, be joining him on the stump? The pair own a holiday home together in Snowdonia, where they enjoy bracing walks in the Welsh mountains.
Former Bank of England advisor and anti- Brexit economist Danny Blanchflower, 64, remains determined the UK is heading for recession. He attacks Michael Gove for his recent denouncement of socalled ‘experts’ for predicting post-Brexit gloom, tweeting: ‘July manufacturing output falls by 0.9pc – Gove has egg on his face again poor fool.’ Poor Danny. He’s a bit like a Japanese soldier still wandering the jungle, unaware that the war’s over.
Sports Direct’s scruffy, pot-bellied boss Mike Ashley attended his firm’s AGM yesterday, as usual sporting his Newcastle United necktie. Despite his £2.5bn fortune, one suspects it must be the only tie in his collection. At least it was fastened properly
in a neat, half-Windsor knot. Former Harrods boss Mohamed Fayed always wore naff clipons, which acolytes assumed was in case a disgruntled employee might try and strangle him. Would anyone begrudge unloved Ashley, 51, from taking similar precautions? Businessman Robin Birley, 58, who owns a string of popular City-based sandwich bars, claims membership at his fashionable Mayfair club 5 Hertford Street is 85pc City workers and self-made business types. He says of today’s modern financiers: ‘They spend less time at lunch and they don’t drink. They work hard. Overall behaviour is much better.’ A depressing thought.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan says he will appoint a ‘night tsar’ after half of the capital’s nightclubs have shut down over the past eight years. He wants the candidate to improve relations between the public, local authorities and the police. How about table dancing entrepreneur Peter Stringfellow, 75, whose outré City establishments have long been popular with bankers, politicians and rozzers alike?