How keen is National Express to win the southern rail contract, which includes Victoria to Gatwick and Brighton? Not very, if City Spy's man in the signal box is to be believed. The public transport group is struggling under debts of more than £1 billion. It's got to refinance £540 million of that total next year - a situation not helped by a current lack of chairman.

After the hasty departure of David Ross, the Carphone Warehouse co-founder and National Express chairman, who went after admitting he had pledged his shares as collateral - a decision that now looks ill-judged, since the Financial Services Authority ruled he had done nothing wrong and it turns out other well-known business figures were doing the same - the buses and trains company's chief executive, Richard Bowker, looks very exposed. The presence of Sir James Crosby, the former HBOS chief, on the shortlist of four for Ross's replacement at National Express, smacks of desperation.

Crosby is talented and available, but the timing, with the banking furore still raging and the architect of Halifax Building Society's disastrous merger with the Bank of Scotland due to appear before the Treasury Select Committee, also looks premature.

* national Express owns the valuable East Coast main line franchise, and Sir Richard Branson for one would like to get his hands on the service (Branson would love to marry the East Coast route with his West Coast line). Bowker, though, remains bullish: “We run Britain's premier long-distance railway, and we intend to keep it that way.” Hmmm...

Branson in F1 passenger seat

On the subject of Branson, the Virgin king is rumoured to be making a play for the former Honda Formula 1 team. Said the Bearded One: “I love Grand Prix. If Bernie Ecclestone can make it more cost-effective for the likes of the Virgin brand to come into that sport, and if he can champion clean motor car racing — which it is possible to do by making sure all the cars run on clean fuels — then at some stage we might be interested in getting involved.”

Er, Richard, the problem with this is that Ecclestone has absolutely no power whatsoever to introduce clean fuels or cost-cutting measures to Formula 1.

The only person who can do this is Max Mosley in his capacity as president of F1's governing body the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). It isn't even correct to say that Ecclestone pulls the strings in such matters. For instance, Bernie said at the end of last year that he would introduce to F1 in 2009 a system where the driver who wins a Grand Prix would get a medal.

Is it happening? No — the FIA vetoed his idea.

* Turf baron John Magnier rarely consigns any of his thoroughbreds to the winter National Hunt game. So, much excitement when the Coolmore billionaire sent out Bellvano at Kempton at the weekend. Despite having Magnier's son JP aboard — the younger Magnier holds a jockey's permit but rarely troubles the weighing room — went off 6-4 second favourite. Except Bellvano did not go off, digging his hooves in and refusing to start. Still, not an entirely wasted trip to the capital for young JP: he was spotted at John Brinkley's Chelsea alehouse just a few hours later, having his ego heavily massaged by a bevy of blondes...

Size does matter for Candy

An intriguing article in The Times about a flat for sale in The Knightsbridge, the Candy & Candy development, for £33 million. The paper says: “But what really counts is the floor area — 5914 square feet — more than seven times the size of the average new-build home.”

Hmmm. City Spy wonders how the price tag also compares with the average new-build home. Is it also seven times as expensive?

* Apparently, a buyer for The Knightsbridge apartment pulled out late last year,
having previously exchanged contracts. He therefore lost his deposit on £33 million. Who
was he? Do tell.

Please, enough of the celebrity charity guff

Former Goldman Sachs economist Dambisa Moyo gives Western celebrities — such as U2's Bono — pushing for aid to Africa a kicking in her new book Dead Aid. However, the Harvard and Oxford-educated Zambian capital markets specialist hasn't finished with his ilk. Asked by the New York Times if she had met the Irish singer, she says: “I have, yes, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. It was at a party to raise money for Africans, and there were no Africans in the room, except for me.” She won't say directly what she thinks of Bono, explaining: “I'll make a general comment about this whole dependence on celebrities'.

I object to this situation as it is right now where they have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the African continent.” Moyo also describes why bond issues are unlikely in her home country. “Many politicians seem to have a lazy muscle. Issuing a bond would require that the President and the Cabinet ministers go out and market their country,” Moyo says. “Why would they do that when they can just call up the World Bank and say: Can I please have some money?'”

* What drives Russia's richest man Mikhail Prokhorov? A hint could be on the biathlon-loving billionaire's personal website. It's a video clip of an Olympic biathlete taking his rifle and shooting his competitors dead as they ski over a nearby hill...

* Golly. It's official, this recession is worse than any we've known. Estates Gazette reports that guests at Knight Frank's annual Central London breakfast at The Dorchester — where the firm takes the eagerly awaiting audience through forecasts for the prime London market —received a shock this year. “Gone were the free KF notebooks and pens.” But there was more. “The succulent strips of bacon had been replaced by what appeared to be a bacon bap for a Lilliputian.” It got worse. “Most depressingly, the big, plump sausage of halcyon days was entirely absent.” This “lack of sausage', said one senior property figure, is a really sad indictment of the economic climate'.” Bring back the sausage! A giant, juicy Cumberland — double-quick!