An old friend emerges from the shadows. It is Sir Derek Wanless, who is a keynote speaker at the annual Chief Nursing Officer’s Summit in Gateshead next week. Wanless is speaking, delegates are told, because he is vice-chairman of the Statistics Commission and chairman of the local Northumbrian Water Group, and he is appearing alongside Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Health. All well and good, except that the Statistics Commission ceased to exist on April 1 last year and Wanless does not serve on the board of the successor body, the UK Statistics Authority. He is still with Northumbrian, but Burnham will now not appear, to be replaced by his under-secretary, Ann Keen.

Calls to the Department of Health, which is in charge of the list of speakers, requesting further information are not returned.

That means we will never know why the CV of Wanless, as provided to those in attendance, should omit his years as head of risk at Northern Rock. Or whether this has anything to do with Burnham’s sudden decision to find somewhere else to be that day.

Dyke in starring role as Ambassador chairman

Greg Dyke has emerged as the chairman of Ambassador Theatre Group, after its purchase of Live Nation’s UK theatres, which include the Lyceum and the Apollo Victoria. The deal had been rumoured in theatreland for months by Ambassador, which owns the Duke of York’s and the Piccadilly. Dyke and his wife have been patrons of the National Theatre for years, he tells me, and are investors in Ambassador.

“I’ve always been interested in the theatre. I saw Laurence Olivier in Othello, queued all night to get tickets.” That was in 1965, at the National, and we were all a bit younger then, I remind him. “As my wife says, I’ve done theatre, film and telly.” The Ambassador job, two days a week, would seem to rule him out of the Channel 4 chairmanship? “I’m not a candidate for Channel 4.” Or anything else, I suppose.

What the devil...?: Aleister Crowley

Hedge fund manager linked to Satanism shock! It is an arresting headline, and I think I can make it work, courtesy of Jonathan Allum, of KBC Financial Products, and his regular e-mail. Patrick Degorce, former French naval officer and the co-founder, along with Christopher Hohn, of The Children’s Investment Fund, has just re-emerged with his new hedge fund Theleme Partners. Degorce famously wrote the letter to ABN Amro that thrust the bank into the arms of Royal Bank of Scotland. Allum has been mulling over the name of his new vehicle. It is generally reckoned to refer to the Abbey of Theleme in Gargantua, by the 16th-century writer Rabelais, a utopia where the only rule was “Fay Ce Voudras”, or “Do What You Will”. This was taken up by the 18th-century rake and alleged Satanist Sir Francis Dashwood, and thence by Aleister Crowley, a genuine Satanist and nasty piece of work, who founded the Abbey of Thelema (sic) in Sicily where his adherents did, indeed, do pretty much what they wanted until Mussolini kicked them out in 1923. “Which has, I am sure, nothing to do with Mr Degorce’s hedge fund”, Allum writes hurriedly.

The people at Waitrose are amused by a very expensive advertising campaign by Marks & Spencer that appears determined to demonstrate that its prices are not that different from those in the “Waitrose Essentials” range.

First, it’s “Essential Waitrose”, actually; second, it seem perverse to take out full-page ads showing that, for example, your lamb shoulder costs exactly the same as Waitrose’s.

“That’s very typical with a comparison-type campaign,” M&S insists. Waitrose counters: “It’s very strange. We’re perfectly happy if they want to run our advertising campaign for us.”

There will be “a handful” of job losses at think-tank IPPR, known for its links to new Labour, I hear. “We and all think-tanks, and charities for that matter, have had funding pressures,” they tell me. “It’s nonsense to suggest we’re in some sort of funding crisis.” As suggested, indeed, by the provocative right-wing political blogger Guido Fawkes, who says: “As New Labour dies the accoutrements go with it.” Sighs the IPPR: “It’s Guido being Guido.”

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