Mining companies regularly have to halt operations when they come across the fossilised remains of some creature from millions of years ago.

Now Swiss giant Xstrata's £23 billion bid to merge with rival Anglo American has brought a real dinosaur to the surface — Anglo's 84-year-old former deputy chairman Graham Boustred.

In a bizarre interview with South Africa's Business Day, he laid into Anglo under boss Cynthia Carroll.

“Anglo's a disaster,” he said. “The board is a disaster. The management is a disaster. The only way for it to be swept aside is for Mick Davis [chief executive of Xstrata] to succeed with his bid.”

Boustred said of Carroll: “The woman's hopeless. Do you know why it's difficult to find a female CEO? It's because most women are sexually frustrated. Men are not because they can fall back on call girls, go to erectile dysfunction clinics. If you have a CEO who's sexually frustrated, she can't act properly.”

He attacked Anglo's focus on mining rather than the mass of industrial businesses it had in his day.

“The greatest company in the world is GE. Can you think of a company that's more diverse. So why all the s*** about focus? The big shareholders want focus. I would have told them to f*** off.”

Boustred turned to his British ancestry in case the wheels fall off South Africa.

So where would this fossil end up? “The Isle of Man. There are no Muslims, no blacks. It rains a lot, but so what? I'll get underfloor heating.”