Despite Mr Peston’s doubts last week, the heat under Tidjane Thiam was being turned up late yesterday. The Slog’s tip remains a solid one: Thiam is a goner. The corroboration for this has to be that the Pru’s James Ross blabbed on yesterday about “not destabilising the business” – management’s version of Mandy’s “Don’t talk Britain down”.

But an institutional investor told the FT yesterday: “I can’t see how Tidjane Thiam going would destabilise the business since it was his actions that destabilised it in the first place.”

That probably goes down as quote of the week for me.

Mr Thiam is the living embodiment of what The Slog is on about when it comes to those with Harvard, McKinsey, MBA and such after their names: it is no guide whatsoever to ability, and often a sign of somebody more at home with numbers, flowcharts and critical path analyses than real customers in real life.

The Slog’s informant added over the weekend that, “Tidge is a nice bloke and stunningly bright, but he couldn’t negotiate his way out of a car park.”