Last weekend my old friend Simon Napier-Bell gave the music industry a serve that should ensure that he gets taken out to lunch by those people who still have expense accounts. The article is not, I hasten to add, a flattering picture of the business or the business practices that made it.

If you are at all interested in the music industry you should read it. Simon is one of the few people that I know who has the benefit of knowing quite intimately all of the big players who made the music industry what it is today - Ahmet Ertegun, Clive Davis, Mo Ostin, Tommy Mottola.... these are the serious players in the game.

Simon told me that he will never be able to make a deal again in the music business as a result of the article. That may be true. But a lot of people who want the goods on the big wheels will perhaps want to talk to Simon...