The dastardly Mr Deedes

Brexit- supporting Lord Jones of Birmingham, chirpy ex-boss of the CBI, was accused by Labour’s Chris Leslie yesterday of idealistically portraying post-Brexit Britain as ‘everybody skipping through the fields eating marshmallows and sweets’. A tactless analogy, surely. Once a portly Michelin man, I’m told Digby, 61, cut out sugary treats some time ago on doctor’s orders, shedding seven stone on a crash diet.

Co-op chairman and boardroom habitue Allan Leighton says of outgoing chief executive Richard Pennycook: ‘His place in Co-op history is secured.’ Not half as secured as the Co-op’s infamous former banking chairman, drug-sniffing rent-boy patron Paul Flowers. Whatever happened to the socalled Crystal Methodist? He was finally defrocked last month, and has found love with strapping nightclub DJ James Nicholson, known colloquially on Merseyside as N-Tyce. Following yesterday’s publication of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) green budget, which forecast a £40bn black hole in public finances, swotty Blackrock analyst (and George Osborne acolyte) Rupert Harrison, 37, tweets nostalgically: ‘Eleven years ago when I edited the IFS green budget I think we warned about a £10bn hole in the public finances. Those were the days…’

Tweedy Ex-Barclays Capital boss-turned racehorse magnate Rich Ricci is stoical after his three most prized nags were ruled out of next month’s Cheltenham Festival due to injury. He says: ‘I’m a next-trade kind of guy and you’ve got to make the most of what you have.’ Which in aptly-named Rich’s case is rather a lot more than most. While he was Bob Diamond’s sidekick at Barclays, he once paid himself £44m.

There are fears over shadow chancellor and City agitator John McDonnell’s spokesman James Mills. Once an adviser to his boss’s predecessor Ed Balls, Mills, 32, was considered a (mildly) more sensible fiscal influence among Corbynista loons. But since the new year, he’s given up meat and alcohol. He’s also grown an unkempt, Jezza- style beard. ‘Gone native,’ sighs an ex-colleague.