The Dastardly Mr Deedes

Aviva’s bullish brand director Jan Gooding attacks WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell, describing his absurd £70m pay package as ‘an embarrassing symbol of disparity’. Sorrell, 71, was yesterday ranked the second best performing boss by Harvard Business Review. He was beaten by Lars Rebien Sørensen, 62, owlish head of Danish pharmaceuticals firm Novo Nordisk, who rubs along on a paltry £2.7m.

Next’s £4.8m-a-year chief Lord Wolfson’s influential Economic Prize launches this morning. The winner of the annual competition, which will be judged this year by former chancellor Alistair Darling and Legal & General boss John Kingham, receives a handy £250,000. Will Wolfson, 48, encourage his wife, Kate Middleton lookalike Eleanor, 34, to enter? A former management consultant with BCG, she certainly has the brains. Though her last job, senior adviser to George Osborne, might have blotted her copybook economics-wise.

British Airways boss Willie Walsh, 54, renews his attack on the £17bn cost of Heathrow’s proposed third runway, which he dismisses as a ‘fantasy project.’ Dublinborn Willie’s a punchy little fella isn’t he? He’s wagered Sir Richard Branson ‘a kick in the groin’ the tycoon won’t be in charge of Virgin Atlanic next year. It’s possible he lacks the honeyed eloquence of his late, stately predecessor, Lord (John) King.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s press officer Liam Parker recently departed to spin for Foreign Secretary and foot-in-mouth practitioner Boris Johnson. How’s he getting on? ‘His hair’s already greying,’ says a source. After Boris’s call for demos outside the Russian embassy, the entire diplomatic corp must be stockpiling Grecian 2000.

Russian bank VTB summoned a meeting of employees yesterday, after a report by the Financial Times claimed it was pulling its European hub out of London. The story, they assured, had been blown out of all proportion. The FT’s relentlessly negative coverage of Brexit now dismays its staff. Not a very happy ship, I’m told.