A repellent tale of our times: the wife of a sacked investment banker has been complaining to the Here is the City website. They are financially OK; but the “fat little fellow” has been at home these past four months and she is getting sick of him.

Does anyone think of the effect on the wives of these City sackings, she asks?

“Most of us didn’t sign up to share every waking minute with a down-on-his-luck egotist who spends his days moping around with a pitiful hang-dog expression on his face, and who constantly relives ‘past glories’ in a feeble effort to retain what little self-respect he seems to have left.”

No, she signed up for financial security, in return for socialising with all those “boring clients”. Now she is considering divorce.

Accompanying posts are split; some say ditch him, others wonder that anyone can be quite so selfish. Including one from a widow of eight months, having lost her husband to suicide because of unemployment and money problems.

Pyjama game winner

Quick-thinking from an unnamed suit at Willis, the world's biggest insurance broker, as related to Lloyd's of London by the XL Group underwriter Nick Gooding.

He was thanking Joe Plumeri, the chairman, for his speech there, and related how the great man had once been at a breakfast meeting with two executives at a hotel in New York.

Plumeri noticed that one was not wearing his Willis badge on his lapel, probably a sacking offence at a US corporation, especially while breakfasting with the chairman. “I'm sorry, sir,” the executive shot back, “I must have left it on my pyjamas.”

And the winner is ...

The BVCA has announced its award for private equity deal of the year in 2007, and the winner is ... 3i's investment in NCP.

This was the deal, along with the purchase of the AA and others, that sparked union fury over asset-stripping, a consumer backlash and a campaign against private equity that ultimately cost the BVCA chief executive Peter Linthwaite his job.

And now the same transaction wins a prize. It suggests that the BVCA, under Linthwaite's successor Simon Walker, has learnt and understood nothing.

Blathering on

Next week is the annual conference of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Needless to say, Gordon Brown will be there, explaining on video how Labour is the natural party of business, how the tax burden hasn't really increased on you people, how tractor production is rising 25 per cent, etc, etc.

Except that he had better get a move on this time, because Gordon's video, the programme shows, is a mere one minute 30 seconds long.

How much blather can Brown fit into 90 seconds? We shall find out.

Speaking of which

Most baffling management-speak of the week comes from PwC, which relates how “companies seek an edge through engaged employees”.

One supposes the happier they are ... but I’m not quite sure this is what they mean.