Dear Reggie...

This email is making its way around the City:

"At the height of World War II on April 6th, 1943, British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, wrote the following letter to Foreign Office minister Lord Reginald Pembroke in an effort to brighten up his day".

Slack is back...

No need to send out a search party. I merely got too fat over Christmas to extract myself from my armchair. Still, save a few bedsores, no harm done. For this week's Sindy column, click here.

Brass monkey Britain, part 1894...

Another day, another company admits that it is not set up to heat British homes during a, er, cold snap. British Gas informs customers: "Severe weather is impacting normal service in your area. If you have a central heating problem, please visit britishgas.co.uk for tips from our expert engineers". Solid work.

Quote of the week

"During periods of very cold weather, we occasionally receive enquiries from customers whose boilers do not appear to be working" - Worcester-Bosch Group (yet again) on why their heating systems never seem to work during a, er, cold snap.

Bad bet

Yet more bad news for the embattled Betfair - the recently floated betting exchange (about which I am obsessed) and on which I took a notional short back in November.

Respected trade website Gambling Compliance is now reporting that the company is "facing the revocation of its [already compromised] license in Italy following an investigation by the country’s gaming watchdogs" - which adds to the gambling group's problems as it attempts to convince investors that it wasn't joking when it trumpeted overseas growth during its IPO.

So far Betfair's investor relations department is losing that battle badly. The shares were off another 6% today to a new low of 975p (a 25% discount to the 1300p flotation price) making this a woeful float by any standards - even those of Betfair's main sponsor, Goldman Sachs.

Sindy Column...

For this week's column - and the return of Ocado's Jason "Missing" Gissing, click here.

Thoroughbred float quickly looks like an old nag

In an unusual moment of SlackBelly prescience, my notional short of Betfair - the recently floated betting exchange - is looking increasingly shrewd.

Its first set of interim numbers today - already showing sluggish growth - have caused the shares to slump (again), leaving them 22% below the 1300p IPO price and 26% off the level that even some duffer like me could tell was too rich.

I had attempted to short the shares on Betfair's own financial exchange, LMAX, only to be thwarted because the new website is yet to actually take bets on individual companies.

No wonder. LMAX is part-owned by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank which apart from stuffing investors with the Betfair float is also a hero of recent IPO campaigns such as Ocado (recovering to 8% below) and Promethean World (70% lower).

Still, you'd be a fool and a communist to suggest that they didn't deserve their fees.