A feathered and furry flock at St. Paul’s cathedral yesterday
TRACTORS, combine harvesters, chicken, sheep and other furry animals took up residence outside St. Paul’s yesterday. City workers flocked to the cathedral at lunchtime, sandwiches in hand, to get a closer look at the animals, who seemed to be munching their way through a fair few Pret scraps themselves.
Plough Wednesday takes place to remind Londoners about the relationship between what they eat and the farming community – something that consumers of certain supermarkets’ burgers may well be thinking about anyway. And indeed Ladbrokes – the bookies are offering odds that horse burgers will be introduced as an official Tesco product, and, a longer shot, that it will sign up superstar racehorse Frankel to appear in its next advert.
The winners of the International Financing Review Awards 2012 have already been announced – rather anticlimactically weeks in advance of the actual ceremony – so there will be little suspense when the trophies are handed out at Grosvenor House in Mayfair next week. However it appears that this year’s host, actor Stephen Mangan (pictured) could provide some much needed surprises on the big day. The compere has appeared in Green Wing, I’m Alan Partridge, Episodes and a series of television adverts for Barclaycard. The Capitalist wonders whether the actor will be brave enough to go for the obvious investment banking jokes, given that his Barclays bosses will be in the audience.
To round off the City literary news for the day, the Square Mile is due to get a brand new library on Artizan Street, which will replace the one on Camomile Street when it opens next Thursday. The Capitalist asked librarians whether there would be any financial literature on the shelves, perhaps a copy of ex-Goldman employee Greg Smith’s tell-all tome? But lo and behold which City book came up trumps? None other than Credit Cards by, you’ve guessed it, Tony Drury.