Elisabeth Murdoch, the boss of Shine TV and an intriguing wild card in the race to be the next ITV chief executive, is a savvy operator.

Her production company has been doing well in the ratings with cookery series Masterchef, which she makes for BBC1; Ms Murdoch is credited as executive producer of the show.

One recent episode involved the three finalists cooking a meal for 90 people on the set of BBC1 drama show Ashes to Ashes. That was a nice plug for another BBC series, which is also made by... Shine TV.

Aldi price cut that wasn't welcome

Nice to see Aldi respecting the Office of Fair Trading guidelines for supermarkets' treatment of suppliers. The OFT's code says supermarkets “shall not directly or indirectly require a supplier to reduce the agreed price of or increase the agreed discount for any product unless reasonable notice of such requirement is given”.

A sizable food supplier sends City Spy a letter he received from Aldi's buyers just a couple of days ago, talking about how it had been investing in gaining sales from rivals: “This investment from Aldi clearly comes at a price and we need your support for it to continue. For this reason we require a 5% cost reduction on the range of products you supply. We will implement this on deliveries from 27 July 2009.” Reasonable notice? Don't think so.

* Marks & Spencer may be having trouble in the boardroom, but it does have Take That's endorsement. Retail Week reports that when singer Jason Orange appeared on stage at Wembley last week, he had squeezed into some tight white trousers with vertical red stripes. At one point in the concert, one of his bandmates pointed at them and quipped: “It's amazing what you can get
at M&S.”

* Stephen Feinberg, boss at Cerberus Capital Management, must have decided total candour was the best policy when writing to its hedge fund customers about its new terms and conditions. The contrite fund manager, which once impressed with its top-of-the-class record for restructuring struggling companies, wrote to clients:

“It kills us that we have lost money and been part of the problem for you, we feel an obligation to you to turn this around. But we just don't know when and how much pain we must take before that happens.”

Foxtons founder in buy mood

Green shoots on the London property scene: Canny Jon Hunt, the Foxtons estate agents founder who sold out in summer 2007 as the crunch took hold, is buying again. Property Week reports that Hunt's luxury serviced-offices business Ocubis is buying 77-95 Victoria Street for just under £20 million. This follows his purchase of Macmillan House on Kensington High Street for £16 million two months ago.

There have been fears that the arrival of Westfield at Shepherd's Bush could dramatically hit Kensington High Street but there are signs the W8 shopping street is hitting back. As well as Jon Hunt's investment, Tesco is introducing a book store in its existing supermarket on the road — with 20 bays of books. The retail giant tells trade magazine The Bookseller that the Kensington book store is a “one-off” but it may be no coincidence that it is almost directly opposite a Waterstone's. And Tesco says it that wants to increase its annual book sales from £75 million to £100 million a year...

* A spoof news item, courtesy of BBC Radio London's Danny Baker show: A crisp lorry and a Securicor van have been involved in a crash. Police said they were the latest victims of the credit crunch.

* Life is not so easy for movie-producer siblings Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Four years after selling their previous company Miramax to Disney, their current outfit, the Weinstein Company, has hired Miller Buckfire, a New York financial consultancy, to help restructure its finances — which include about $700 million (£431.8 million) in lending arrangements and $490 million in shares held by investors including Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group and Goldman Sachs. The Weinsteins have also been spotted talking to US media group Liberty Media's chief executive Greg Maffei, during a break in the action at Allen & Co's annual pow-wow for the entertainment industry. Earlier this year, Liberty rescued a satellite radio firm from bankruptcy. Could it be looking to become a white knight at Weinstein Company too?

* Film-maker Michael Moore doesn't mellow with age. Revealing that his latest documentary is to be called Capitalism: A Love Story, he says:

“It will be the perfect date movie. It's got it all — lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day.”

* More from Barnet, the council that blew £27.4 million of taxpayers' money on Icelandic banks. Council leader Mike Freer is hell-bent on a glittering career as a Tory MP, and is running for Lady Thatcher's old seat of Finchley and Golders Green, currently a Labour marginal.

But this niggling problem with Iceland just won't go away. Freer, a former banker at Barclays, squarely blames the council's treasury department for the howler. Deloitte has just completed a report broadly agreeing, but strongly arguing that the lack of monitoring of its work represented “a significant deficiency in internal control”. Barnet treasury had not been internally audited for years and had ignored a recommendation to appoint a monitoring officer. And Freer, as council leader, is blameless in
all this?