A British engineering consultancy has been selected by the European Union to develop and test within a decade a new generation of vehicles that drive themselves. The EU is helping to fund the project, named Sartre, or Safe Road Trains for the Environment, and the consultant is the London-quoted Ricardo.

It all sounds highly fanciful, but the firm insists it is a genuine attempt to build so-called “road trains”, whereby various cars or other vehicles travel in convoy with only the one at the front steering. Big names, such as Volvo, have also signed up. The project was announced some weeks ago and is beginning to do the rounds of various techie internet sites.

A Volvo expert insists that it “does not require any hocus-pocus technology” and the first protoypes could be tested within a couple of years. The technology, known as “autonomous driving”, can be used on existing roads, insists Sartre’s Tom Robinson. Once the “road trains” are formed, those in the rear vehicles can get on with whatever they want, such as watching TV, reading the papers or talking on the phone. Whatever next?

Adam Jacot de Boinod is a collector of weird and wonderful words. He has sent extracts from his latest volume, The Wonder of Whiffling, out just in time for the Christmas trade and containing a section on the world of work.

I have come across “prairie-dogging”, popping your head up above the office cubicle to see what’s going on.

But not “a pig in a python”, apparently a sudden surge in a statistic measured over a period of time. Or a “headless nail”, a colleague who, once appointed, is completely useless but impossible to prise out. Or “shooting the puppy”, the policy of doing the unthinkable.

A chance to brush up on what matters in life

Torex Retail is a largely forgotten scandal from a couple of years ago. The Serious Fraud Office raided addresses linked to the directors of the AIM-listed software firm after a surprise profits warning only days after an upbeat trading statement.

Not much has happened since, as usual, but various directors resigned, including Robert Loosemore, former chairman and keen tennis player, who also stepped down from London Capital, a spread-betting firm.

And what has he been up to since? Someone has forwarded me the Aegon British Tennis Ranking of one Robert Loosemore. Ranked No 6 in the country, in the age group 40 and over. Clearly, an opportunity to brush up his game.

Gareth Davis, the outgoing Imperial Tobacco chief executive, was well known for his fondness for the weed. But, given that the habit has pretty well died out elsewhere among the middle and executive classes, does his successor Alison Cooper also smoke? My betting is not. I am told, though, that she enjoys the “occasional” cigarette and cigar.

So the spin doctors clearly saw this one coming. “New Imperial boss gave up smoking for health reasons” would rank with Barclays boss Matt Barrett’s dislike of credit cards as a corporate own goal. So has anyone ever seen Cooper with a fag? Or does she force the odd gasper down for the sake of the team?

Life imitates art in Malibu

In the blue corner: Diana Jenkins

Diana Jenkins, wife of Roger Jenkins, the departing Barclays über-banker, has been discussing their unusual marital arrangements in the December issue of Tatler.

She lives in Malibu, and is launching her own business, a health drink called Neuro. Jenkins spends half the year there.

A refugee from the Bosnian conflict who arrived in London with no passport or money, she moved to LA after becoming discouraged by the snobby London social scene. “They treated me like I was an Eastern European mail-order bride.”

Her husband, who is leaving his job at Barclays Capital — his last reported annual salary cheque was in the region of £50 million — credits his wife with much of his success and calls her “a force of nature”.

He is asked if he might relocate to Diana and their two children full-time: “She’d be off to Antarctica.”

Diana, née Sanela, admits that she first saw the world she decided she wanted to inhabit through the eyes of the soap opera Dynasty, which she used to watch in Bosnia.

Has money made her happier?

“Money is a wonderful thing.

I respect it.

I love to earn it. And I love to spend it.”

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