Business diary: Serial shocker to ruin your cereal

Edited by Simon Goodley

Readers of a prudish nature - or those ploughing through my column at the breakfast table - should look away now. Still with me? OK. It is my duty to report a quite extraordinary and disturbing episode which took place at media group Emap's AGM on Thursday, at the Holiday Inn on London's Russell Square.

There, in front of a female attendee, a man appeared outside the main meeting room and - how can I put this? - began visibly pleasuring himself. "I just walked off," recounts a stoic woman witness.

Still, I'm told that this sort of thing might have happened at other companies' meetings recently, and so it's conceivable that we've got a serial AGM flasher running amok, but information is predictably tricky to come by.

"No comment," blocks an Emap spokesman when I call to ask about the incident. Whatever next?

Putting pranksters in the frame

Bad news for the Yes Men, that bunch of pranksters who keep playing practical jokes on big business.

The Adam Smith Institute's Eamonn Butler reports on his blog how execs from the US think-tank, the Cato Institute, agreed to be interviewed by the team but, after being tipped off as to who the team really were, decided to turn the tables on the crew.

Instead, the Cato contingent arrived with hand-held video cameras and filmed the exchange where they asked the jokers why they hated America so much?

The Yes Men turned out to be more negative than their name suggests. They made their excuses and left.

John Tiner has had one party to mark his departure from the Financial Services Authority (on board HMS Belfast) and now I hear of another.He's sent an email asking staff to join him for an informal drink at his desk on Wednesday, with the invitation running from midday to 6pm.That's the day before the watchdog's annual meeting, but the scheduling doesn't look like inconveniencing many. Employees have already starting placing bets on who will remain at the departing boss's party the longest. My money's on the demob happy Tiner.

simon.goodley@telegraph.co.uk

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