Never one to miss an opportunity to drop his trousers in the name of publicity, Richard Branson stripped off last week for the launch of his latest venture.
Hoisted by crane above New York's Times Square, wearing nothing more than a strategically placed cellphone, the maverick entrepreneur declared his new company,
Virgin Mobile USA, had "nothing to hide" in the way of monthly service charges.
But battle-weary market watchers, still reeling from a slew of United States accounting scandals, were probably not surprised to learn that Branson had staged a cover-up of his own.
A close inspection revealed that, far from being naked, the flamboyant one was modestly encased in a skin-coloured body suit.
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What's wrong with this country when a trendy, sports-based pub such as Leftfield, on the Auckland waterfront, ends up in receivership?
Leftfield's demise - blamed in part on "an unusually wet winter" - has reddened the cheeks of a clutch of prominent shareholders, among them marketing guru and former Lion Breweries boss Kevin Roberts, whose background one would have thought was conducive to running a pub.
Even the Roberts offspring have not been spared - Companies Office records show Ben, Rebecca and Dan Roberts are shareholders of parent company Cavoh.
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A bit Brash? Maybe not, in hindsight. International news service Bloomberg used this unflattering headline last week to tell the world about the Good Doctor Don's career change: "Central Banker Takes Pay Cut to join Political Loser."
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Promotional guff for Smirnoff Ice, the latest alco-pop to hit the market, makes it clear the drink's target market is the urbane male imbiber.
"It's all about the witty, on-the-ball antics of young men," we're told.
That would explain why the Smirnoff literature devotes an entire page to 22 pick-up lines which range from the soppy ("How was heaven when you left it?") to the crass ("Get your free mammograms here") to the pragmatic ("Can I buy you a drink, or do you just want the money?")
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A bemused Ministry for the Environment official relayed with some horror the alarming tale of a city family who moved to the country and found the lack of silence a shattering experience.
Believe it or not, the bucolic sound of lambs calling for their mothers was enough to start the former urbanites grumbling.
"Spare us and give us the silence of the lambs," they bleated to the farmer trying to cope with the busy lambing season.
"Spare us from silly city slickers," snapped back the hardworking farmer.
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<i>The biz:</i> Not-so-naked Branson bares less than his all
Never one to miss an opportunity to drop his trousers in the name of publicity, Richard Branson stripped off last week for the launch of his latest venture.
Hoisted by crane above New York's Times Square, wearing nothing more than a strategically placed cellphone, the maverick entrepreneur declared his new company,
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