Air Partner, the listed aircraft-charter company that has hitherto been famous for supply the Boeing jetliners to transport guests of Sir Philip Green to his various Indian Ocean parties, has signed up two new clients: Gordon Brown and David Miliband.

Using chartered planes rather than an under-utilised Air Force One type of aircraft to fly the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary may look like worthy Whitehall hair-shirtery, but it isn't that simple. One story, legend in the private-jet market, is of the Boeing aircraft that was bought to fly the Chinese premier around the world.

After it was sent to the US for an internal refit, the Chinese ultimately refused to pay the bill after Beijing spooks had to spend the next few weeks locating and ripping out the bugs planted by the CIA...

The architects are revolting

Are the architects who are threatening to boycott Prince Charles's lecture to the Royal Institute of British Architects tonight protesting too much?

A group of leading architects, including Will Alsop and Piers Gough, say they won't attend the lecture, and have written an angry letter to The Guardian to publicise the fact. However, the sponsors of the lecture, Gleeds, the projection management firm for the construction industry, are laughing off the protests. For a start, Alsop apparently didn't have a ticket to the lecture.

Richard Steer, senior partner at Gleeds, says: “Only 400 tickets were available and it was oversubscribed two or threefold. It's almost as good as Barcelona-Manchester United. If Will Alsop hasn't got a ticket, how can he boycott it?”

* Steer is quite a wag. City Spy reported him last month as saying the recession is so bad that surveyors are heading to Iraq for work. “If you had asked me two years ago whether I would go to Iraq, I would have said you must be joking...[the choice is] getting killed over there or staying here and killing yourself.” So, Richard, are you suddenly seeing any of those fabled green shoots? “I think the economy has probably stopped getting worse, but I am not sure it's getting any better.” City Spy reckons Steer might encourage the RIBA dissidents Alsop, Gough et al to try their hand at building projects in Iraq...

* ITV is on the hunt for a new chief executive as beleaguered boss Michael Grade hosts its annual general meeting on Thursday. One of the key players behind the scenes is Legal & General, which has upped its shareholding above 5% in recent weeks, and is now one the largest investors behind BSkyB. Intriguingly, one of L&G's non-executive directors is Henry Staunton, who is a former finance director of ITV and worked on the Carlton-Granada merger until 2005. Staunton is unlikely to be having any direct input into L&G's investment strategy. But he ought to have a few choice words about whom ITV should appoint as the next CEO...

* Having a name like Mike Proffitt and working in the green energy business may seem like being a hostage to fortune. However, Proffitt's AIM-quoted wind farm developer Renewable Energy Holdings has sold its other business, a proprietary wave-energy technology, to Australian company Carnegie for £30 million — seemingly a decent deal that sent REH's shares to a 2009 high, and against a total market capitalisation of REH at just £25 million. We'll see. It's an all-share transaction, giving REH a 35% stake in Carnegie's Sydney-listed stock but tying REH's fortunes closely to Carnegie making it a success.

* If you have tears, prepare to shed them. The Ochs Sulzberger family, which controls the New York Times (for the moment anyway), is having to get by on dividend payments of just $4.5 million this year — in the good years, it was used to 10 times this and more. The descendants of the family that has run the paper since 1896 are warring — some want a chance to cash out completely. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who recently bailed the paper out with a $250 million loan, is, as they say, watching developments with interest.

* The rest of business is in recession, but not lapdancing. Gross profit at Peter Stringfellow's St Martin's Lane club rose from £5.06 million to £5.25 million last year, according to the latest accounts. While Angels, a second club in Wardour Street set up by a sister firm, is being “closely monitored in the current economic climate”, the weak pound has given the 68-year-old a boost. Stringy's right-hand man and finance director, Cliff Silver, tells City Spy: “Since June, business has been booming at Angels . It's really picked up a name abroad, and foreign businessmen are flocking to visit.”

* How does £50,000 for 40 days a year sound? That's the rate being offered by the Crown Estate as it searches for a new chairman...

* Oops! Marks & Spencer has boobed again. The bra in the advert to announce the scrapping of its surcharge on bras above a DD is only available in sizes B to DD. So it's not for any of the amply-endowed customers who have been battling for the removal of the “tit tax”.

* Farewell to David Elias, buccaneering financier and one-time fuel credit-card king. Elias built himself a multi-million-pound fortune and, er, lavished a good deal of it on himself, buying racehorses, cars, and boats. The man had global ambitions and hired Ernest Saunders no less, the disgraced ex-Guinness boss, to help grow the business. After a pause for thought, he went into the magazine business with Richard Desmond. Both ventures ended in acrimony and litigation. Elias sued Saunders and Jacob Rothschild, accusing them of stealing his Richbell Group from underneath him. Desmond sued Elias for some unpaid bills and the whole Richbell edifice came tumbling down around Elias's ears, ending with him being made bankrupt.

Many City snouts were in Elias's trough in his heyday, but most deserted him. He latterly based himself in Singapore where he was re-establishing himself until contracting pneumonia, the complications from which killed him at the end of last week.