The dastardly MR Deedes

Rakish Post Office Chairman Tim Parker’s luscious poodle perm is much-discussed in boardrooms. Mischievous types wonder if the Porsche- driving ex-Deputy London Mayor’s grey ringlets are all his own. ‘It’s entirely real,’ insists Parker, 60. ‘People expect it to come off when I dive into a swimming pool. But it stays on.’ I trust his numerous chairmanships, which also include luggage maker Samsonite and the National Trust, receive the same meticulous attention as his elegantly-coiffed locks. Now that former chief of the General Staff General Sir Mike Jackson’s soldiering days are over he enjoys several cosy directorships, including Chairman of G7ENIUS, an internet security firm which safeguards against identity theft. Ironic, then, that the droopy-eyed war hero’s private email has been hacked. Last week, friends received one of those irritating ‘phishing’ emails purporting to be from Jackson, claiming he’d been mugged in Istanbul and needed urgent funds to be wired to him. Difficult to know what hard-as-nails Jackson, 72, would find more embarrassing. That his own email was hacked or friends thinking he’d been duffed up by a bunch of Turkish bandits. Thomas Cook boss Peter Fankhauser reported a 5pc drop in bookings last week, but the sleek, Swiss-born executive remained buoyant about the travel operator’s summer prospects. Clearly the jovial Herr Fankhauser, 55, who succeeded Harriet Green in 2014, likes to maintain some perspective when it comes to threatening setbacks. A recent visitor to his London office says he keeps an urn on his desk of the vol- canic ash which grounded planes for weeks in 2010, as a wry memento of the crisis which cost Thomas Cook £70m. Could we be about to see the return of Habitat to our high streets? Only three of its stores currently remain since its purchase in 2011 by Home Retail Group, soon to be owned by Sainsbury’s. But I hear Habitat’s cigar-chomping founder Sir Terence Conran has written a f riendly note to the supermarket’s president Lord ( John) Sainsbury informing him he thinks his old shop is ‘revivable’. Conran, 84, founded Habitat in 1964 with second wife Caroline. The pair remain close, despite her rinsing the old booby for £10m in their 1996 divorce. Booze pedlar Diageo’s new Chicago-born Chief Financial Officer Kathryn Mikells, who arrived at the Johnnie Walker owner from Xerox four months ago, is no devotee of her employer’s wares. Hosting the firm’s recent press dinner at The Shard, which groaned with alcohol, she touched nothing stronger than fizzy water. Skinny-as-a-rake Mikells, 51, told hacks she eschews the hard stuff nowadays after becoming more health conscious. Bully for her, though events at Diageo – which saw profits sink by £156m last year – may change all that, of course.