Steerpike

Marketing types are desperately jostling for a piece of the action at London Fashion Week, which starts at the end of the month. Take an irony-free press release trying to flog ice cream off the backs of catwalk models. This is not any old ice cream but ‘the world’s first protein ice cream’, inspiringly called ‘Wheyhey’. The blurbers say that Wheyhey ‘will be keeping sweet-toothed models and fashionistas satisfied’. Given that it apparently contains no fat, no sugar and the same amount of protein as a small chicken breast, Mr S has his doubts about that. Most of these ‘sweet-toothed’ yet stick-thin models could do with a box of Krispy Kremes; but Wheyhey appears to have got the stamp of approval.

Mark Carney’s charm offensive continues. I hear that the new governor of the Bank of England was laying it on thick last week when he bumped into Faisal Islam, Channel Four’s Economics Editor, after he gave his first public speech. ‘Don’t you have a book out?’ The Canadian smoothy asked Faisal, who offered to send him a copy. ‘Well I've got an idea, how about I buy one?’ The charmer cooed. ‘I’d be honoured, governor.’ Faisal beamed. ‘Hey,’ replied the governor, ‘I said I’d buy it; I didn’t say I’d read it!

Is this the end of business attire? The slow degradation of the standard issue suit has reached the Institute of Directors — the Pall Mall-based bastion of all things business. Its website says that members should ‘make the decision on what they would normally wear to do business, as long as it is not deemed indecent.’ So, what does that mean? ‘Members will be permitted to wear jeans, T-shirts, shorts and all variants of footwear. There is a very mixed view about the dress code and this will be for a trial period of 3 months.’ The trial is advanced: my mole says that there have been at least seven noted ‘incidences’ of short-wearing, which sounds positively Californian.

Former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins, who has become a 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'-style rent-a-quote in middle age, was never going to applaud the appearance of names like Riley, Isla and Mia in the top ten popular baby names of last year. In high dudgeon, she interrupted elevenses to hit the airwaves: ‘These are the sort of names you can hear parents screaming across the playground, screaming because they have not done their home learning, they are the sort of people that choose names like this.’ Hopkins, a professional snob, reiterated that she uses names as ‘a shortcut, a very efficient shortcut to deciding who my children play with.

When the history books tell the story of peace in the Middle East, the name of Lord Stone of Blackheath, managing director of Marks & Spencer and a Labour peer, will be up there in lights. For he is a soothsayer with unique insights on the region. At least, that is the impression given by his ‘out of office’ email message: ‘I am in Israel for August back Sept 3rd. I said there'd be talks by then! Peace in 9 months!’ You read it here first.

The Prime Minister’s love in with President Obama is blossoming. Not only has he recruited Barack’s campaign manager, but he’s also become one of those annoying acquaintances who jumps on your music taste and tries to make it their own. Hip Dave has declared that Bruce Springsteen, who was a key Obama fundraiser, is his ‘guilty pleasure’. Apparently, he has to hide his enthusiasm from his wife, who, outrageously, ‘doesn’t like The Boss’. He said, ‘When Samantha is not around there is a little bit of Dancing in the Dark or Born in the USA’. Interestingly, Dave described Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska, which was about the economic depression of the early eighties, as ‘grim’.

Roll up, roll up, Cameron-bashers everywhere. Peter Cruddas is planning to blow some of the £180,000 he won in libel damages against the Sunday Times with a ‘Victory Party’ at his City offices on 17 September. Cruddas was falsely accused of charging donors for access to Number 10, and he’s somewhat piqued at having got naff-all help from Dave when the story broke. This is a ‘thank you for standing by me party’ and it promises to feature in the book that Cruddas is writing about his bust-up with Downing St. The invitation warns: ‘You might be asked some questions by a ghost writer who will be in the audience. You do not have to answer any questions and you do not have to give anybody your name and details unless you want to. It is your choice.

Steerpike particularly enjoyed this close-up.

Some years ago, soon after he ploughed £30 million into the Independent titles, Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev proclaimed: ‘I'm taught to be more Marcus Aurelius than Caracalla if you know your Roman history.’ He said even nicer things about his new employees: ‘If we're lucky to find somebody like Mark Twain, who used to be a reporter, or Ernest Hemingway or Anton Chekhov, then we have something completely new.’ Well, times have changed. There is uproar at Indy Towers, where staff members are reacting to the giant axe that has been taken to the arts and culture pages of the Independent on Sunday. Let’s hope any undiscovered literary giants, lurking on the newsroom floor, are not cut down in the cull.