An independent film company is seeking individuals with no City experience to work with an anonymous hedge fund manager and learn how to be traders. It is for a BBC2 series likely to air next spring, at around the time of the City bonus season - on the assumption that there is one. “We're trying not to make it like The Apprentice,” the producer, Anthony Philipson, of Century Films, tells me. Nor is it reality TV. “The channels aren't funding reality TV shows.”

For which mercy, heaven be thanked. Instead it will be three hour-long documentaries, as currently planned, with the working title of Traders, which will show how these ordinary members of the public shape up on the markets. There will be six of them eventually, after applicants are subjected to a rigorous screening process to see which are most likely to be up to the job, in terms of mathematical ability, for example.

Moore holds unusual view of the dress code

You'd never know from his business attire, but Chris Moore, the engaging chief executive of Domino's Pizza UK & Ireland, is the Grayson Perry of the pizza world. At the company's annual franchisee awards dinner, he has pitched up as Marilyn Monroe, Marge Simpson, and Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura. This year he opted for a transvestite dancer, while for the global bash in Las Vegas it was the Queen, as a tribute to Dame Helen Mirren's Oscar. Moore, who clearly doesn't take himself too seriously, is happy to confess to all of this, but adds hastily: “I do dress up in bloke's clothes as well.”

— Ping! An invitation arrives to a meeting at PowerGen Milan (Italy), for some obscure reason. That would be your PowerGenitalia subsidiary that became so widely and hilariously famous a few summers ago, would it?

— This has been knocking around the blogosphere but has not reached a wider audience here. These are remarks by Stephen Schwarzman, who runs Blackstone Group, at a Florida meeting, about the failed attempt to buy mortgage firm PHH. Blackstone is not commenting. Can't think why not. “Trying to buy a mortgage bank in the midst of the sub-prime crisis was the equivalent of being a noodle salesman in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb went off. Not a lot of noodles left, or even a person, and that's what happened to us on this deal.”

— Sign of the times? An invitation arrives from one of those ghastly rich people's clubs, which allows you to book various luxury events and stay out of the way of those awful people who don't have as much money as you. It offers cut-price, temporary membership, so you can press your nose against the window briefly and see how the really rich people live. Market not too good, is it?

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