Barfly: Bar bill sadly not business as usual

IT WAS ten years ago that Business am, the ill-fated Scottish business tabloid newspaper that managed to burn its way through a highly impressive £25 million in a little over two years, was launched at a lavish party staged at Edinburgh College of Art.

Former staff of the Swedish-backed pink daily, including former managing director John Penman, below, and ex-editor Richard Neville, gathered last week in an Edinburgh pub to reminisce about the days of generous expense accounts and final salary pension schemes.

During the brief lifespan of the affectionately remembered title, the generosity of the Swedes had ensured the beer and wine flowed freely at regular staff get-togethers. But despite the sterling efforts of a number of individuals, the former workers only just managed to reach the 700 bar tab needed to ensure the room rental was free.

PR is an uplifting job

WHO says PR isn't all fun and games? A friendly (we think) colleague of PR man Ross Nisbet passed on a photo of him being held by attractive young women in mini-gold kilts. The picture was sent on the occasion of Nisbet leaving PR firm 3x1 to become a senior media relations executive at Ernst & Young from tomorrow. Barfly wonders if his new job working for accountants will provide as many thrills and frills. Said his soon-to-be ex-colleague: "We'll miss him dearly but there will certainly be no more lying down on the job."

Is Daniels a victim of rewriting of history?

WIKIPEDIA, the online encyclopedia to which anyone can add anything they like, has a lot to answer for. If you look at the entry for Eric Daniels, the perhaps less than loved chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, it notes that in addition to the dubious claim of being a cricket fan, he is the author of a self-help book entitled Don't Bank On It - a guide to managing redundancy in the workplace.

Following some diligent research on the most authoritative database of published books - erm, Amazon - Barfly suspects a hoax. There is indeed a book with that title, written by one Martin J Meyer, not Daniels. There is even an author, Eric Daniel, who has published a slim volume of pretty abysmal poetry called Inner Thoughts. And while the idea of Daniels' inner thoughts might be intriguing to some, this is clearly not our man.

It is likely that the claim to authorship is meant as a satire on one who has presided over the loss of thousands of jobs at Lloyds. Obviously, the "wiki" part of the site means the vast majority of information on it must be taken with a grain of salt. But it still has millions of users around the world and such wrongful information can be changed. But has Lloyds cut the staff who would monitor this sort of slur?