BORIS OUT FOR A RIDE WITH KELLY BROOK TO LAUNCH BIKE SCHEME
Boris Johnson’s love affair with two wheels continued yesterday with the launch of his driver-frustrating Sky Ride scheme, where roads are cleared throughout central London to allow cyclists to take in the sights.
But The Capitalist can’t help but think bikes weren’t the only thing on the mind of the red-blooded Mayor. Accompanying him on a joy-ride through the City was the curvaceous Kelly Brook, fresh from her recent shoot with Playboy.
And not for the first time – Boris has ensured she has been at all three Sky Ride events he has organised.
He appeared positively weak at the knees as the glamorous star of Piranha 3D threw her arm around his shoulders, her vertiginous heels rising almost to his puffed-out chest. The conversation that passed between them as they revelled in the sights of our fine city, alas, we will never know. The Capitalist imagines Boris serenaded her with sweet nothings, recounting tales of his misadventures at Eton.
He said the scheme is “sheer bliss for anyone with a love of our great city or the bicycle”. If cyclists have as much fun as Boris appeared to be having, the event will be a roaring success.
OLYMPICS BONUS
As a former Goldman Sachs investment banker Paul Deighton must be used to earning large bonuses. But the one he has been granted this year as chief executive of LOCOG, the company that is stage-managing the Olympics, he will not be keeping.
Deighton earnt a bonus of just under £300,000 in the past year thanks to achieving a number of targets. That would normally have supplemented a salary of £480,000. But Deighton has decided to give over his bonus to charity.
A spokesman says that he has not chosen which charities to give to but they would not include Arsenal, the football club he supports. Of the other LOCOG board members, Sebastian Coe’s salary is up slightly from £357,000 to £365,507. Sir Keith Mills, the creator of Air Miles, and a Tottenham Hotspur director, gets a £50,000 package for being a non-executive director while former ITV and EMI chief Charles Allen gets just £6,000 for being chairman of LOCOG’s Nations and Regions Group.
ON PAR GAG
Cooperative Group chief executive Peter Marks is well known as the country’s most famous musical businessman; he plays drums in a rock covers in a pub band, Last Orders.
But when not running one of the country’s largest and most diverse retail outfits, which covers supermarket to funeral services, Marks is also a keen but frustrated golfer.
What is your current handicap, The Capitalist enquired at the end of an interview in his wood-panelled Manchester headquarters?
“My clubs are my handicap,” replied a deadpan Marks.
The Capitalist is sure that Marks in not the only golfer to feel the more he plays the worse he gets.
GENERATION WHY?
Amid the flood of silly season press releases that bombarded this newspaper’s offices during August, one in particular stuck out for its proficiency at stating the bleedin’ obvious.
According to research commissioned by recruiter Badenoch & Clark, Generation Y – that’s those workers aged 16-24 years old – is disillusioned with the workplace.
The research found a third of respondents do not trust their bosses and refuse to believe either most or any of what they say.
And there was The Capitalist thinking that it was the employers who were fed up with the attitude of Generation Y – or “Generation Why, Oh Why” as one City wag likes to call them.
Perhaps facing up to the truth that the world owes no-one a living and knuckling down to some hard graft would put a stop to the whingeing and give exasperated bosses a break.
DEAD IMPRESSIVE
Perhaps those disillusioned young workers should take a leaf out of Laura Copley’s book.
While holidaying in north Norfolk, The Capitalist stumbled across the news that the 18-year-old Norwich girl has set her sights on twin ambitions.
Besides being an aspiring beauty queen – Copley is striving to become Miss Norfolk – she is also keen to broaden her horizons and explore a business career in an industry that is unlikely to die out any time soon.
Having become interested after doing work experience at a funeral parlour, Copley is reported to have just secured a post at a local firm.
Whoever said self-starters were a dying breed? Here’s wishing her luck in her chosen career.
Victoria Bates is away.