The resignation of Sir David Murray as chairman and director of Glasgow Rangers has sparked speculation as to who may take over the current Scottish Premier League champions should he go the whole distance and offload his majority shareholding.

At this week's party for the unveiling of the new Green's Restaurant & Oyster Bar in the City, David Burnside resurfaced in connection with the club. Burnside, the former British Airways spin doctor, Ulster Unionist politician and now with his own successful PR agency (clients include Scots Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Jackie Stewart), was at the Green's bash and was not denying his interest. In 2007, Burnside said he wanted to put together a consortium to buy out Murray's stake but at that time the Rangers chairman was not in a mood to sell. Then last week, Murray announced he was quitting, saying he wanted to take a back seat after 20 years of almost daily involvement with the Ibrox club. Murray gave no indication of what might happen to his shares.

Burnside is not short of well-connected fellow Rangers supporters — one of his friends is the Sky business presenter, Jeff Randall.

Branson's Galactic flying high

ALSO at the Green's City restaurant opening was Will Whitehorn. Sir Richard Branson's long time PR and these days running the Virgin Galactic space venture was in fine form. Whitehorn reports that Virgin Galactic already has received $40 million in deposits from would-be astronauts, thought to include the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stephen Hawking. No flights have yet taken place but Whitehorn reckons Virgin Galactic would have a value of at least $1 billion if it floated and it presently stands at number three in the Virgin roster of businesses.

* CONGRATULATIONS are in order to Will Whitehorn in another capacity. City Spy hears he has had one of the Virgin-leaning Pendolino trains named after him (he played a leading role in managing the Virgin West Coast service before heading off to space travel). Surely, a first for a PR man?

* SO, the race is on to find a successor to Sir Stuart Rose as Marks & Spencer chief executive, with headhunters clamouring to land the plum brief. In fact, the competition has been hotting up quiety behind the scenes for months now. The clear favourites remain Justin King of Sainsbury's and Andy Bond of Asda. King is thought to be tickled by the prospect of returning to his old stomping ground — he ran M&S food before Sainsbury's. However, he would not come cheap and his confident persona is thought to grate with some of the more conservative M&S types. Bond has already played his hand, declaring that he is qualified to do the M&S job — a move that again may count against him within the higher reaches of the company. But in the absence of an insider — and there is no one that fits the bill — it looks like a two-horse race.

* WAIT, there's always Simon Fox of HMV. Just as Fox was being touted as ITV chief in succession to Michael Grade, so he is being promoted again, in regard to M&S. City Spy wonders what is going on with Fox? Do people pluck his name out of thin air or do they receive tacit encouragement? How happy is he, really, at HMV?

Battling the vampire squid

Michael Moore, the shy and retiring anti-capitalist filmmaker, is the latest to draw on Rolling Stone magazine's “vampire squid” image of Goldman Sachs. Moore's latest film, due to be screened at the Venice Film Festival next weekend, is a comic documentary, or stockumentary if you like (apologies to Spinal Tap), of the global financial meltdown. “It's a crime story, but it's also a war story about class warfare,” he says. “And a vampire movie, with the upper 1% feeding off the rest of us.”

* TENSIONS between Swiss Re's UK and Swiss employees have apparently hit a new high — thanks to the swine flu outbreak. According to City Spy's mole at Swiss Re, a number of staff in its human resources department fell ill after returning from a hen party in Majorca. But rather than informing all of its employees, the company's workers in Switzerland were emailed to warn them about the risks of coming to London, but that London staff were initially left in the dark.

Disney does a Dave for boys

The power of rebranding: UKTV famously more than doubled audiences simply by renaming its digital channel as Dave — despite the fact it is largely just repeats of old male-oriented shows such as Top Gear and QI. Now Disney hopes it has pulled off a similar rebranding wheeze with the launch of Disney XD, which it describes as “the UK's first kids' TV channel primarily focused on boys”. The new channel, which launched on Bank Holiday Monday, replaces the unmemorably named Jetix. The US entertainment giant is claiming a 150% increase in viewers for launch day compared to a year ago and a 50% higher day “share” than Jetix ever achieved. Mickey Mouse ought to be pleased.