THE Duke of York is off to Azerbaijan - again. At the beginning of June, Prince Andrew will fly to Baku for a four-day official visit, his third trip to the oil-rich country in 12 months and his sixth foray into the Caspian state since May 2005.

He will be greeted, as usual, by his goose-hunting chum President Ilham Aliyev, who recently banned the BBC from broadcasting into the country. Currently, Azerbaijan is building a giant petrochemical plant near Baku. Although many British companies are keen to work on the project and they can expect the roving trade ambassador royal to press their case, the Prince may find his interests torn.

There is much competition for the business, including from Kazakhstan's Sat & Co, headed by businessman Kenes Rakishev, who is said to have bought Andrew's Sunninghill Park home for a hefty £3 million above the asking price last year, only to leave the house uninhabited and decaying.

* AMONG the casualties in the Lehman collapse, it transpires, was motor racing legend John Surtees. The only man to win world championships on two wheels and four, Surtees, now 76, lost up to £500,000 of his pension pot in the Lehman collapse. Apparently, Arbuthnot Latham invested the money in a commodities fund a few months before the collapse. Surtees hasn't ruled out legal action against Arbuthnot and has instructed a QC.

Not in Duncan's backyard

* CITY SPY can out Alan Duncan as the most senior Conservative to flout leader David Cameron's pleas for the party to embrace local wind-farm projects. These pages recently exposed the extent of the “nimby” revolt amongst Tory shire MPs over wind farms in the British countryside.

Now it has emerged Duncan, shadow leader of the House and a former Cameron-appointed Shadow Energy Secretary, has been instrumental in blocking not one but two green energy proposals in his countryside constituency. Counter to Tory energy policy, this is proving to be such an embarrassment to the Rutland MP that he has engaged in a cover-up, removing details on his official website of his backing for opponents to the wind farms. Duncan took time out from explaining how he claimed thousands of pounds of gardening bills on expenses, to tell City Spy that he is not a nimby. It's just that wind turbines would not look awfully nice in the beautiful Vale of Belvoir.

* THE Japanese are about to have their Javelin trains launched on the high-speed commuter line from Kent to St Pancras and the Germans are launching services into Marylebone under the guise of the Wrexham & Shropshire Railway. Now the Chinese of the Nanjing Puzhen Rolling Stock Company want to supply the trains to run on the London Midland services in and out of Euston. Didn't we used to make lots of trains once?

* A SWEDISH CEO has sacked himself — because he couldn't bear to lay off any more workers. Mats Melbin had already let 25 employees go from metals company Örnalp Unozon when he learned that another 35 would have to be cut. That would have slashed the workforce in half. So he resigned. Said a union steward: “He is a hero, a principled man in unprincipled times.” David Malmström from parent company Vinovo was less impressed, saying there was a “lack of consensus between the board and the CEO”.

* THE Deutsche Telekom spying scandal has taken another twist with the revelation that the German telephone giant authorised Stasi-style snooping into the sex lives of job applicants. According to a 2004 document entitled Company Security Personnel Screening, the company hired private detectives to spy on a female manager for a Croatian telecoms company who applied to work for DT, owner of T-Mobile in the UK.

Their report described intimate personal details, including how many lovers she had, her “select association with older men” and how she's “a female carnivore with an extremely elevated need for sex”. It even added that the woman's sister is an “active agent of free love.” The report was turned up during the ongoing inquiry into the controversial conduct of DT which trawled through private bank and phone records to track down the sources of leaks to the media. Yes, but did she get the job?

Berry Bros keeps it in the family

PITY any member of the Berry and Rudd families who flunks a place at university but harbours the thought of working for Berry Bros & Rudd in St James's. You've got no chance.

Simon Berry, the chairman, reveals in The Spectator that he has changed the rules so that no non-graduate family members are allowed to join the famous wine merchants. That would have meant that Simon himself could not have entered the firm. He also insisted on another rule that Berrys and Rudds must have worked elsewhere for at least two years.

The next chairman is likely to be Geordie Willis, 28, Simon's nephew. He spent his university holidays working in Berry Bros' famous cellars. When Willis graduated, he asked Uncle Simon to give him a job, only to be told, no — he'd not been anywhere else for two years first.

“My sister, who is the vice-chairman, rang me in an uproar, demanding to know why I'd fired my nephew. But I had to follow the rules.”

* THE latest big corporation to flex its legal muscle against a small operator — and lose — is McDonald's. It's lost a trademark action against a restaurant in Malaysia that dared to call itself McCurry. The judge said there was no suggestion the owner was trying to pass off McDonald's food, that the name was a reference to “Malaysian chicken curry”. His restaurant sign bore no resemblance to McDonald's either. So why the sensitivity? One possibility, of course, is that McDonald's already employs McChicken, McMuffin, McValue Meals, McNuggets, McCrispy, McEgg, McMonday, McTwist, McWings, McSausage, McSpaceship, McTeddyBears, McCafé and the rest — but not McCurry. Not yet.