PARTY STALWART TEBBIT HAPPY TO STICK HIS NECK OUT FOR THE CITY
TO ONE of the City’s favourite haunts, Boisdale of Bishopsgate, last night for a special members’ game dinner hosted by Lord Tebbit, staunch Thatcherite and eternal bearer of the beacon of those on the right of politics.
Tebbit, as is his wont, was happy to wax lyrical about the issues facing the Tories in the run-up to the election, and the City will be happy to hear that Boris Johnson isn’t the only one on their side.
“There is a degree of embarrassment in the party about the problems in the banking industry, but it is important that we make the City aware that we regard them as a valuable part of the economy and that we work with them,” he said.
Meanwhile, he reckons David Cameron is Britain’s version of Barack Obama.
“He’s very well-educated, very persuasive, very smart, good at public relations and a good speaker,” he says, dancing along the precipice of damning with faint praise.
“But he hasn’t had much experience of executive responsibility, and it remains to be seen how he will cope in a role he’s not been used to before. We can only hope.”
LITERARY VISION
While we’re on the subject of the former senior minister, Tebbit seems to have found a new vocation in life – as a writer. He’s recently published a cookery book dedicated to game recipes, “The Game Cook”, from which two recipes were served at the dinner last night (rabbit terrine with Armagnac prunes and Highland pheasant with haggis and apricots – and mighty delicious they were, too).
He’s also currently putting the final touches to a children’s fiction book about a young paraplegic boy and his trusty black Labrador, though he’s yet to find a publisher for the tome.
But it seems the literary outburst will be short lived.
“I don’t have any further plans at the moment,” he tells me. “Perhaps I ought to write a party manifesto instead…” Will the man’s political ambition never die?
ON THE JUICE
The City has always taken pride in its knowledge of fine wines, so congratulations to De Beers’ Howard Davies and his team, who won a “Wine and Wisdom” competition run by restaurant Vivat Bacchus last night.
Almost 250 budding connoisseurs had entered the contest, including teams from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and law firm Lovells, who had to undergo wine knowledge and trivia quizzes and a strenuous wine-tasting session (poor dears).
De Beers took home a £600 voucher for a meal at Vivat, a donation of £2,500 to a charity of their choice, and an engraved trophy. Certainly one to display prominently in the office to impress potential future clients.
FREE WHEELING
If anyone in the City has been wondering this week why Simon Bragg, the chief executive of Oriel Securities, has adopted a John Wayne swagger over the past week, fear not.
Bragg led around 30 of his staff last Sunday on a 110km cycle ride from Oriel College in Oxford to the Oriel offices in the City, in aid of the firm’s local charity the Blackfriars Settlement.
Quite some achievement, it’s got to be said – though at least the group was sponsored by pub group Young’s, which opened up its boozer in Paternoster Square specially for the intrepid cyclists.
SMOOTH SAILING
Over yet again to Carphone Warehouse tycoon Charles Dunstone’s impending nuptials to PR executive Celia Gordon Shute, which, The Capitalist revealed yesterday, will see crooner Jools Holland performing to a star-studded marquee in the Inner Temple Garden on Embankment.
I hear the lovestruck pair will be heading off for a relaxing three-week honeymoon, which will probably seem like paradise after all the legwork Dunstone has been putting in, both on the exhausting main event and on the group’s second quarter trading statement yesterday.
Details are top-secret ahead of the big day – other than the fact that there won’t be sight nor sound of Dunstone’s beloved yacht, for which the bride doesn’t exactly share his unbridled passion…
FILM BUFF
If you’ve not yet had a read of the serialisation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail” book in the new edition of Vanity Fair, it’s worth a gander simply for the insight into Lloyd Blankfein, the immaculate top dog at Goldman Sachs.
Apparently, Blankfein, with “top shirt button undone and tie slightly askew” (heavens) rang up Jamie Dimon soon after the collapse of Lehman Brothers to complain about rumour-mongering about his bank at Dimon’s JP Morgan – and proceeded to quote Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, asking: “Did you order the Code Red?”.
The Capitalist is sure Dimon was positively quaking in his boots.