CHARLES STANLEY HIT FOR SIX IN HUMBLING CRICKETING DEFEAT
BATTERED egos at Charles Stanley, which is still recovering from its painful cricketing defeat at the hands of Ignis Asset Management in the final of the Stockbrokers Cup.
“Cricket can be a great leveller,” said Charles Stanley’s “gutted” captain Ed Clark, who brought his team to the match as the undefeated champions for the past two years.
Charles Stanley looked as though they would win the game easily at one stage, following a “flying start” to the batting from Nick Perin and Ed Shooter, who dispatched the ball to all areas of the Nursery Ground at Lord’s “like a young David Gower”.
But Ignis soon turned the tables, which may have had something to do with the fact they had ex-Middlesex captain Ben Hutton playing on their side. With one run needed and every fielder around the bat, the game became “a matter of tip and run”. Unfortunately, even though a close run-out was on the cards, Ignis “scampered through for a single off the last ball of the game” to take victory.
“I’ve never witnessed such an unlucky end to a game of cricket,” said Clark. “I feel I should learn something from this experience, but I fail to find any meaning whatsoever.”
HONEYMOON PERIOD
A HEARTWARMING story from Cupid, the AIM-listed online dating company founded by tech entrepreneur Bill Dobbie, which today announces its acquisition of several Brazilian dating sites to help the 62 million singles in Brazil meet their match.
One of the sites, AondeNamoro.com, is a traditional dating website; another, SolteirosComFilhos.com, is for single parents. All the properties in the deal are owned and managed by Brazilian “dating entrepreneur” Edgard Nogueira, who will work with Cupid over the next six months to improve the sites’ performance.
He’ll have to work hard though, as £150,000 of the £500,000 Nogueira can expect to pocket from the sale is “conditional upon the achievement of business targets”. Not so romantic.
MONKEY BUSINESS
THE FILM director Rupert Wyatt is on Christmas card terms with Freida Pinto, after directing the actress in the blockbuster sequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
But it wasn’t always so – go back ten years and Wyatt was right at the bottom of the heap as a lowly summer temp at PwC, toiling away for a meagre salary as he tried to get his movie career off the ground.
Accountancy’s loss was Hollywood’s gain, as it turned out – but there are no hard feelings at PwC, whose comms director Mike Davies recalls in the company’s in-house magazine The UK Weekly: “Rupert was a very nice bloke who at the time was breaking into the film business, so it was nice to see that he did really make it.
“His dad Jeremy, a former PwCer himself, sent us an email encouraging us to go and see the film.”