The dastardly Mr Deedes

Odd that John lewis’s upright chairman Sir Charles Mayfield, 51, should announce his departure date two years in advance. Still, can’t hurt to give the headhunters an early heads up, I suppose. exarmy officer Mayfield’s predecessor, Sir Stuart Hampson, 71, has done all right for himself post-John lewis. He’s chairman of the Crown estates and tours the lucrative speaker circuit, where his bon mots command as much as £25,000. nor, one suspects, will lieutenant Mayfield be knowingly undersold. Business poobah Sir Mike Rake, whose stuffed-to-the-brim CV includes chairmanships of BT and Worldpay as well as president of the CBI, was asked by Radio 4’s Dominic O’Connell whether he could refer to him as a City grandee. ‘I’d rather not,’ he replied sternly. Why so touchy? Perhaps Rake, 70, worries his lofty status undermines his demands for a second referendum. He and his millionaire business contemporaries have laughingly dubbed it the ‘People’s Vote’. Google’s geeky chief executive Sundar Pichai talks in an interview of his sparse upbringing in Chennai, India, where cramped conditions required him to sleep on the sitting room floor: ‘There was a drought and we had anxiety. even now, I can never sleep without a bottle of water beside my bed.’ now a reputed billionaire, shouldn’t Pichai, 46, be more anxious about the sexual harassment allegations dogging his firm? Just a thought. Ruddy-nosed JD Wetherspoon publican Tim Martin is surprised to discover his customers – ‘even builders and rugby players’ – are drinking pink gin as an aperitif. He’s referring to a syrupy pink-hued spirit his pubs now stock. I rather hoped he was referring to the tres buvable navy concoction of Plymouth gin and angostura bitters, still consumed in proper City lunching haunts. Former Prime Ministerial consort Denis Thatcher referred to it as his rocket fuel, and jolly well he ran on it too. Sainsbury’s head offices in Holborn, london, now boast gender-neutral lavatories. a bold statement to reflect these complicated, non-binary times in which we now live (God help us) – or just pennypinching boss Mike Coupe’s latest cost-cutting wheeze?