The dastardly Mr Deedes Have you any gossip for our City diary? Email: mrdeedes@dailymail.co.uk

Roly Poly hedge fund tycoon Crispin Odey will be pacing nervously around his Mayfair offices. Luxury home builder Berkeley Group, which he has heavily ‘shorted’, rallied 2.6pc this week. Last month, his European fund suffered a 22pc loss in just two weeks after a series of calls on the global economy backfired. If this run of form continues, old Harrovian Odey, 57, will be forced to cut down on his expensive, gusset-busting lunches, though that will do him no harm at all. A legendary scoffer, he was once spotted at Piccadilly restaurant Corrigan’s demolishing a steak and kidney pud avec mash and kale plus a ‘side order’ of a loin of beef. Outgoing Debenhams boss Michael Sharp has always appeared what you might call a little highly strung. No more so than when Silver Fox Sharp announced his resignation at a press conference yesterday. The Lincolnshire-born father-of-five, 59, laid a series of motivational flashcards out on the desk in front of him for journalists to see which read: ‘Think happy thoughts’ ‘Tell the negative thoughts that meet inside your head to sit down and shut up’ and ‘Put your positive pants on’. A restful retirement sounds long overdue. Did you hear jargon-spouting City headhunter John Purcell defend BP boss Bob Dudley’s eye-popping £14m pay deal on Radio 4? ‘You can’t really fault the guy,’ reasoned the chirpy-sounding Dubliner. He then claimed the oil giant would struggle to find anyone else willing to do Mississippi Bob’s vastly-renumerated job. Jolly hockey sticks interviewer Sarah Montague, 50, did well to stifle her matronly giggles. City PR man and all-round greaser Roland Rudd clearly revels in the opportunities his pro-EU group, Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE), gives him to hobnob with all three political parties. He boasts: ‘There are good relations between the board of BSE and 10 Downing Street. But there are also strong relationships with [Labour’s] Alan Johnson and the Liberal Democrats.’ With fingers now in every pie, surely someone will offer the wily stoat, 54, a much-craved peerage? I’m told the poor fellow is petrified his business rival, Brunswick boss Sir Alan Parker, will get one first. Apropos the EU Referendum, pouting femmes d’affaires Elizabeth Hurley offers her two penn’orth to financial monthly Spear’s Wealth Management: ‘If it means that we can go back to using decent light bulbs (60-watt, peach-coloured, both bayonet and screw-in) and choose high-powered hairdryers and vacuum cleaners if we so wish, I’m joining Brexit for sure.’ Sounds like Brexiteers should snap up bright-as-a-bulb Liz, 50, as spokesman immediately.