David Sullivan, chairman of Birmingham City Football Club, is the latest businessman to throw his support behind Ukip in the forthcoming European elections. He has become a big buddy of Mike Nattrass, the pro-independence party's West Midlands MEP, and announced his support at a campaign event at the club.

Sullivan gives the usual reasons for his decision to vote Ukip on June 4. “The British economy is in deep recession. How can we continue to pay £40 million each day for EU membership?” he says in a letter to Nattrass. According to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, Sullivan is worth £450 million, but I am told he has stopped short of making a political donation.

Are there any reservations at Ukip about accepting the backing of someone with such dubious antecedents, I ask? “Erm ...

We're interested in getting support from people who have been successful, and Mr Sullivan certainly has been successful,” they say. “That's it, really.” Yes, but he made his money from porn originally. “And newspapers ... which you've got no problem with.” No, I suppose not.

An invitation is doing the rounds from a firm of headhunters to a wine-tasting in July. How kind. Not sure if saying “I'm just off to an event hosted by headhunters” sends out quite the right message to one's boss in this environment, but ... then scroll down. The cost is £70 a head (so to speak).

So we pay you seventy quid to attend an event at which you, presumably, network like mad in hopes of drumming up some custom? How does that work again?

A punter has set up a website that lets you send e-mails automatically to various ministers and departments, including Yvette Cooper at the Treasury, demanding Sir Fred Goodwin have his pension from RBS taxed at 90percent and lose his knighthood. Just go to www.shredsirfred.org.uk. “Come on. We need one million people to e-mail the Government,” says Jon Mountfort. Ambitious.

There are times when you just have to brazen it out. Lloyds Banking Group sponsors the Monday evening gala opening of the Chelsea Flower Show. It was the first appearance since being dismissed as chairman for Sir Victor Blank, who at the weekend paid the price for bludgeoning the bank into the HBOS takeover, which increasingly looks like even worse news than the ABN Amro takeover that saw for Royal Bank of Scotland.

So was Blank at Chelsea, I ask the bank? “We wouldn't confirm diary commitments.” But thousands of people must have seen him. “We can't confirm diary commitments.”

Don't be silly. Of course he was. As was Sir James Crosby, who used to run HBOS, looking “sheepish”, says my spy, and Sir Stuart Rose, looking “dapper and confident” - when doesn't he? - just hours before slashing the M&S dividend.

The corporate wives had obviously been told to tone down their dress in these straitened times - “fewer absolutely stand-out outfits, though they'd had work done since last year”.

No smoke without ire, as they say at BA

A funny tale reaches me from a BA 747 about to take off from Heathrow.

The plane was held because a pre-flight check had discovered that an ashtray in one of the toilet doors was missing. Apparently, you have to have one even though, obviously, no one is allowed to smoke. The pilot is fuming at the delay, so to speak, and tells the ground crew to “go and rob one” from another aircraft. Or failing that, a whole door. And where is the flight heading? Mexico.

Incidentally, on that subject, I hear from Mark Brumby at Blue Oar that one hotel there is offering “flu-free guarantees”. Should you get swine flu within a fortnight of checking out of their hotel, you get three holidays free.

There is, on mature consideration, a slight catch there. Having survived the plague, would you really want to go back? Three times?

Unhappy returns

In the blue corner: Richard Burrows

There is a tradition of Irish business executives doing spectacularly well far from the Republic's small pond and returning as conquering heroes.

And then not doing as well as they might have expected. Think of Sir Tony O'Reilly, boss of HJHeinz, whose Waterford Wedgwood foundered this year.

Richard Burrows, on becoming Bank of Ireland chairman almost four years ago, must have felt he had it made. He was admired for having climbed the greasy pole in Pernod-Ricard, the French drink group, despite being Irish, having joined when it bought Irish Distillers and became joint managing director.

Alas, the bank was the subject of a €3.5billion state rescue and lost €7 million last financial year. Unveiling the results, Burrows quit yesterday.

The figures, in fact, weren't as bad as some had expected.

- Do you have a diary story? city.diary@thetimes.co.uk

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