Ralph Lauren, the New York fashion house, is attempting to suppress internet publication of this extraordinary image — an advert for one of its products and, you will agree, a useful contribution to the ongoing debate about anorexic models. As you see, she is not even size zero — she has, I hope for her sake, been heavily Photoshopped or, alternatively, she is some sort of weird human/praying mantis hybrid possessed of only a vestigial digestive system.

The picture first surfaced on boingboing, the eccentrically named but well respected techie blog, and then went viral. Lauren apparently has issued various legal “cease and desist” orders and the picture has gone from at least one “Photoshop disasters” site, but is now everywhere else. (This is known as the “Barbra Streisand effect”, after the singer tried to suppress some pictures of her home, which ended up all over the net.) Lauren won’t tell me a) whether the picture is genuine, or b) why it is trying to suppress it. The irony, of course, is that presumably it would once have spent millions trying to promote the advert; now the group is paying lawyers heaven knows how much to stop people publishing it.

• A jubilant Patrick Evershed, the veteran fund manager, rings from Manchester. It is 50 years since he first attended a Tory Party conference — two years before Ken Clarke’s debut — and 50 years since he became chairman of his local branch of the Young Conservatives.

“It’s the best conference I’ve ever been to.” Evershed says he has now spent £75,000 of his own money on adverts warning about the UK’s economic woes, most over the past five years, and he now thinks that the Tories agree with him.

“I kept on spending the money because I couldn’t find anybody who believed me.”

To be plain, Cadbury just wants to keep it dark

An extraordinary note arrives from the organisers of next week’s IGD Convention. This is some mundane “Leadership In Adversity” conference that would not normally trouble us, but the media are being told that, while Todd Stitzer, chief executive of Cadbury, is one of the speakers, “understandably CADBURY ARE DOING NO MEDIA INTERVIEWS AT ALL [sic]. Please do not attempt to speak to Todd Stitzer as you will not get an interview. Failure to comply could result in you having your media pass revoked.”

A bit heavy-handed. Aren’t you even allowed to say, hi, Todd, how’s it going? And might this have something to do with Stitzer’s earlier off-the-cuff reported remarks that a purchase by Kraft of the US, which Cadbury is now strenuously resisting, might make “some strategic sense”?

Remarks that caused some trouble and were then strenuously denied?

• Next week, as MPs return to the House, the Treasury Select Committee will embark on its latest inquiry. For earlier ones, into banking, for example, the committee has called heavyweight witnesses such as Mervyn King, Sir Fred Goodwin and Alistair Darling. So who will they call this time? The list of household-name female heavy-hitters at their peak in the City is a short one. Dame Clara Furse is no longer at the London Stock Exchange, though she remains a non-executive of Legal & General. Nicola Horlick has hit a sticky patch. Katherine Garrett-Cox, aka Katherine the Great, at Alliance Trust, I suppose. Thereafter? Or does the lack of potential witnesses tell MPs all they need to know?

• One would not normally refer to another paper’s website but I am struck by the response of those liberal, sandal-wearing readers of The Guardian to the Royal Mail story. “Sack the lot of them”, “I’m waiting for a book that was sent on the 1st of October”, “Still waiting on two packages . . .” Someone once defined a conservative as a liberal who’s just been mugged. Perhaps another definition is a liberal who’s missing two Amazon packages.

Back in pizzas at his own speed

In the blue corner: David Page

David Page is back in the pizza business — albeit on a more limited scale than in 1993, when, along with Hugh Osmond and Luke Johnson, he floated PizzaExpress.

He has taken charge of Rocca, which has one outlet in South Kensington and is seeking more.

Page, now chairman of the quoted Clapham House, is in this on his own account and has hired various staff and builders from the PizzaExpress days to grow the business to perhaps ten or 15 eventually. It will be owned by those involved — “a co-operative that doesn’t pay out any money” at present, he admits. “We think we can compete very well with the larger players because we’re better value and haven’t got any debt.”

Including PizzaExpress? “You don’t take on the largest person in the industry. That would be silly.”

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