— In America, they are swearing in the jury in a case that has convulsed the nation but not been reported here; the McDonald’s employee suing the hamburger chain after being subjected to a bizarre sexual ordeal in a back room. The case, the result of a hoax call by someone claiming to be a police officer accusing her of theft, looks like one of those awful experiments where subjects are told to torture strangers as part of a psychological test. Most details are unsuitable here, but the hoax “officer”, who had done the same elsewhere, persuaded another member of staff and a passer-by to put the 18-year-old through various humiliations. The whole thing was caught on CCTV. She wants $200 million; the staff member, already convicted of false imprisonment, wants $50 million; McDonald’s says that the two contravened written policy forbidding strip searches. And it all happened in Kentucky, oddly enough.

— Spotted at Wilton’s Music Hall, for the launch of the latest album by the pedestrian Scottish songstress KT Tunstall: Guy Hands, owner of her record company EMI. Hands, whose tastes, I thought, ran more towards heavy metal, is apparently greatly enamoured of her work. It is a truism of the music business that when the money men, as opposed to the true fans, get involved in the creative side, it spells bad news. The early days of the Virgin label, for example, before Branson lucked out with Tubular Bells, were notable for the dire, long-forgotten hippy-dippy acts he favoured. A case of better Hands off than hands-on?

— Michel Roux Jr at Le Gavroche has been recalling the time when a mega-rich Russian came into the restaurant and lit up a huge cigar. “I politely asked him to stub it out,” he tells the magazine Real Business.At which the Russian offered to buy the restaurant for £5 million if it meant he could keep smoking. The Roux family still owns Le Gavroche, but it might have been close.

Question on sources given high frequency

They certainly do things differently in Russia. A few months back a leaked document from Gazprom, controlled by the Russian Government, suggested that the company was aware of “antiGazprom” attitudes in the UK. One solution was to target leading business writers. At the weekend this paper reported that Gazprom has thought about bidding for Dow Jones. A colleague has been interviewed by a Russian radio station on this. The main line of questioning, quite persistent, was from whom she had heard this. The interviewer seemed to have difficulty appreciating that this was not something that would be divulged.

— In Russia again, today is “Day of Conception”, where couples in Ulyanovsk, birthplace of Lenin, are given the day off in the hope that a child will be born on Russia Day, June 12, nine months hence. There are prizes of fridges, cash and cars. It is an arresting image, inhabitants of a remote provincial town, in the pursuit of fridges . . . No, perhaps we won’t go there.

— They held a mini-cricket tournament at the Honourable Artillery Company ground yesterday, with six City firms competing, as part of charity campaign designed to bring cricket to state schools. Particular satisfaction at Andy Stewart’s Cenkos. “We got 87 for no loss. Cazenove got 36 for four. Whoops.”

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