STRICTLY BUSINESS BRIEF ENDS VINCE CABLE’S DANCING DREAM
THERE is something bothering business secretary Vince Cable – and it’s not the separation of retail and investment banking, the Greek debt crisis or even waging war on Rupert Murdoch.
No – Cable is concerned his demanding day job could mean he never fulfils his dream of returning to Strictly Come Dancing for a full series of the show, following his one-off Christmas special where judge Craig Revel Horwood memorably described the coalition politician as “leaning slightly to the right”.
“I would love to go back on Strictly,” Cable told The Capitalist. “But I can’t possibly spare the three months away from work.”
Cable took up dancing with his late wife Olympia – in whose memory he still wears a second wedding ring alongside one for his second marriage to Rachel – but, despite having passed a number of dancing exams, he can only squeeze one weekly ballroom dancing lesson from a private tutor into his 80-hour week.
Even worse, a three-month break to enable Cable’s Strictly comeback is not even an option when the 68 year-old retires because, as the foxtrot king explained to The Capitalist over gin cocktails at the FT Summer Party: “I will never retire.”
Also at the Lancaster House drinks were Barclays’ chairman Marcus Agius; Arcadia boss Philip Green; Lloyds Banking Group chief Eric Daniels; the Bank of England’s deputy governor Paul Tucker; and Winterflood Securities’ life president Brian Winterflood and his wife Doreen, spotted in conversation with Harvey Nichols’ CEO Joseph Wan.
Chris Huhne also put in a brief appearance, although The Capitalist arrived too late to get the latest on the energy secretary’s motoring brush with the law – apparently, he had already sped off into the night.
CASH IN HAND
OPEN for business opposite the Goldman Sachs office on Fleet Street: a new branch of pawnbroking chain Suttons & Robertsons, which claims the upwardly mobile are looking to its services as a way of avoiding “hefty bank charges”.
So, a tactical positioning from the City pawnbroker, which takes pains to make clear on its shop window that its cash-for-objects services are “discreet”. “Has the Goldman bubble really burst?” wondered an amused observer.
OUT TO LUNCH
FORMER Conservative Party director general Sir Paul Judge has six jobs that pay and “rather more” that don’t – and he has added to his list of unpaid duties by being approved by the Court of Aldermen as sheriff of the City of London, effective from September 2013.
The title dates back to Anglo Saxon times, when London’s sheriffs were responsible for law and order in the City; these days, the sheriffs run the Old Bailey and assist the Lord Mayor with his ceremonial duties in the UK and overseas.
As Judge told The Capitalist of his new two-and-a-half-day role, an important part of these duties is “entertaining the Old Bailey judges over lunch” and to be regaled with their tales of murder and violence.
Still, the man who led the Premier Brands buyout from Cadbury Schweppes and reduced the Tories’ overdraft by £17m no doubt has the stomach for the job.
SETTLING SCORES
YESTERDAY’S story on the number of brown shoes creeping on to the City’s trading floors touched a nerve, provoking an argument between two brokers at Central Markets as to whether brown footwear is acceptable on “dress down” Fridays.
“I have been led to believe the rhyme goes ‘never brown in town, unless it’s dress down’, wrote confused broking manager Keith Swann, who has £20 riding on the outcome of his feud with colleague Ben Phillips.
Unfortunately for Swann, a helpful adviser at Debrett’s confirmed: “Dress down is a relatively new phenomenon, introduced in the last 25 years, while the original phrase ‘never brown in town’ dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.”
IN-HOUSE JOKER
THERE won’t be a dull moment at the Council of Mortgage Lenders under new director general Paul Smee (below), the man renowned for his “dry sense of humour” while at the London Stock Exchange.
“We were once in a meeting where we were told about the appointment of a new head of internal communications,” recalled a former colleague of Smee from his LSE days.
“Paul asked where she was joining from, to which he was told ‘Marks & Spencer Financial Services’. Quick as a flash he replied: “Does that mean if we don’t like her we can take her back and ask for a refund?”
Then again, perhaps you had to be there…