The board of British Airways, with fees of £50,000 a year for a part-time director attending seven meetings and all those unlimited first class flights for them and the family, has been one of the most eye-catching City gravy trains. But that train is about to get a lot shorter.

At the moment, BA has one of the heaviest non-executive director weighted boards around, with a total of nine part-timers, including chairman Martin Broughton. However, in the coming merger with Iberia, BA has agreed to put up just three of its non-executives. Broughton has already bagged his berth as deputy chairman of the new group, so there are only two seats left. Handily, a couple of BA's non-executives stood down in the summer, but that still leaves six people vying for two slots. Three are women — Baronesses Denise Kingsmill and Liz Symons and Alison Reed. It's likely, for the sake of inclusivity that at least one woman will make the cut. Kingsmill and Symons are both Labour peers so their influence may wane in a likely Tory-dominated era. Reed seems to have been around for ever (she joined in 2003) but she heads the airline's audit committee and has a strong City background. Ken Smart is a renowned air safety expert and few people know their way round the City better than Maarten van der Bergh. Then there's Jim Lawrence. The finance director of Unilever is a highly experienced American international executive and a former boss at Northwest Airlines (indeed some say he should have been made chief executive of the merged BA/Iberia).

Four of them have to be jettisoned but who?

* Racing legend Lester Piggott, hero to at least two generations of City punters, if not the bookies and the tax authorities, had a ding-dong battle to the finish with an Anglia rail ticket clerk the other day. The former jockey travels to London Liverpool Street two or three times a week from Whittlesford (or “Whittlesford Parkway”, as it has been imaginatively renamed), the nearest mainline station to Newmarket, on his senior citizen's rail card. This occasion he forgot the card, and as a man known for counting his pennies, asked for his discount. “Sorry, no card, no discount.” Lester pleaded that the ticket office jobsworth knew that he had a card, and suggested that as a somewhat well-known person it was unlikely that he was impersonating any other card holder. The inspector refused to yield, and so did Piggott who went back home, rather than pay the full fare.

* Such mystery surrounds the life of Oleg Deripaska. Earlier this week City Spy said that, as has been widely reported, the Russian oligarch is banned from visiting America because of US government concerns about possible links to organised crime. Au contraire, says Deripaska's spokesman: “He has been twice to the United States this year and there are no restrictions on his travelling to any country.”

So what should we make of The Wall Street Journal's detailed news report which insists the oligarch is barred from the US and was only allowed to visit under a “limited entry permit” because the Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted to quiz him about what the newspaper called “a continuing criminal probe”? Those close to Deripaska maintain that this report is inaccurate.

The best firms are all... mine!

Helen Alexander, president of the Confederation of British Industry, has given an interview to the French Chamber of Commerce. She said that the best companies remain focused on doing what they do best. Her example? The Economist, where she was chief executive. Her example for a British company that excels in engineering? Rolls-Royce, where she sits on the board.

Mind the Bollands

THINGS are not looking so great these days for John Magnier. Racing is in the doldrums and stallion owners in Ireland are, for the first time in 40 years, having to pay tax on their stallion income — currently around 40%. Could things get any worse? Well, yes they can. The 2010 stud fees at Coolmore, Magnier's breeding complex in Tipperary have been slashed and at his Ashford Stud in the US, prices have also come tumbling down — by as much as 50%. This poses a very serious problem, not just for Magnier, but for the breeders who paid the old prices for the right to send a mare to a stallion. What purchaser is going to buy the progeny when they know by waiting a year later they're likely to get a 50% plus discount? Trying times indeed for the horse business.

* DON'T get confused. Marc Bolland is the new chief executive of Marks & Spencer. Mark Bolland is former deputy private secretary to Prince Charles, now in public relations. Marc Bolan was the late singer in T-Rex. All three men dress (or dressed in Bolan's case) with considerable style.

* MORRISONS finance director Richard Pennycook on whether Marc Bolland has been put on gardening leave: “No. He hasn't got a garden.”

* NEXT time John Humphrys interviews the Chancellor or a leading banker, it might be worth bearing in mind his own take on finance.

The Today presenter tells the latest issue of NatWest customer magazine Sense: “I was brought up by my parents to believe that, for working class people with no money, borrowing was a sin.” He says his father was self-employed and often out of work but would never ever have taken the dole or benefits. “He didn't believe in that socialistic stuff!” Asked if he invests in shares, Humphrys says: “Yes. Well what happens is that I give my money to the stockbroker who gives me a little bit back later on.” His best money-making idea? “I've never had one”.