The dastardly Mr Deedes
TalkTalk’s elfin femme-d’affaires Dido Harding’s decision to donate her £220,000 cash bonus to an autism charity is praised. How about she hands a sliver of her additional £2.8m pay packet to her local church? Harding, 48, and hubby, Tory MP and ex-JPMorgan trader John Penrose, 51, infuriated locals in their somerset village earlier this year by building an outdoor swimming pool – covered by a ‘hideous’ grey zinc roof – which overshadowed the neighbouring 15th century Church of st James. a generous donation to the collection box might smooth things over with the padre. Google engineers began moving into the internet giant’s vast new London offices yesterday, built at a cost of £1bn. The 2,000 other workers set to join them in the 11storey building in King’s Cross will have access to free food, massages and a 90-metre indoor running track. Cookery classes from a chef that used to work with Jamie Oliver will also be on offer. Employees might prefer tips from Google’s slippery tax lawyers, who’ve somehow helped the shadowy tech firm pay a pittance in UK taxes. The Queen’s once exclusive bankers Coutts & Co, now, alas, popular with Dlist celebrities and assorted vulgarians, offers a concierge service for clients. It’s for ‘sourcing things for people that they can’t get themselves or don’t have the time to get’, apparently. The bank says it recently helped a customer organise a raucous four-day stag do in Barcelona, pinpointing all the top bars and nightclubs. Bet rascally, ginger-whiskered Coutts customer Prince Harry can’t wait to give the service a whirl. London Stock Exchange’s chatterbox chief executive Xavier Rolet, 55, was spotted relaxing at Eton’s annual Fourth of June parents’ picnic day on Saturday. I’m told the extreme sports-loving ex-banker sends his son to the 550-year-old college. British public schools are all the rage with stock exchange chiefs. Monsieur Rolet’s earnest counterpart – and fellow Anglophile – at Deutsche Boerse, Carsten Kengeter, 49, sends his children to George Osborne’s alma mater St Paul’s. Crusty Us egghead George akerlof, 76, is among ten nobel-prize winning american economists who’ve signed a letter urging the Uk to vote Remain, claiming Britain would be better off economically inside the EU. Word of warning: akerlof has something of a dog in this fight. He shares a marital four poster with the Us Federal Reserve’s matronly chair Janet Yellen, 69. The prospect of Brexit rattles government crockery big time over in Washington.