IT'S been a while since Frank Timis graced City Spy so a big shout out to the former boss of Regal Petroleum who told the market he'd found a whole load of oil in Greece only for it to turn out he hadn't. City Spy is much enjoying Frank's homilies on his own website, www.franktimis.com. To save time spent browsing, here are some choice Frankisms. It's always been written that he was busted twice for possessing heroin. Wrong.

“Three times he was arrested and fined for possession of heroin. Frank paid his fines and has always declared in submissions to companies and stock markets throughout the world that he is a man with a past.” Timis wants us to know that, “Mutual trust is an absolutely crucial part of developing a business and this applies not just to the way in which investors are treated but also to the relationship with the local community and environment.”

Yes, this is the same Frank Timis who sold off the main assets of Regal soon after the share price reached its peak, without informing his fellow directors and shareholders.

Still, “The one thing he has never forgotten, through bad times as well as good, is that we should all give as much as we take. That doctrine has been a constant throughout his professional life.”

The bed with a starring role

Furniture retailer Feather & Black's lent a bedroom set to film company Sigma for Ewan McGregor and Eva Green's new film The Last Word, reports Retail Week. The “Bali” bed and bedside table were duly returned to the store. A few weeks later a couple looked round the shop and alighted on the Bali. When they opened the bedside table, they found a large box of condoms. The store had no idea the condoms were there. Closer inspection revealed one condom was missing. The couple bought the bed and the table.

Late-night fun with gas man

SOUTHERN Electric has been eclipsed as Britain's cheapest household energy supplier by none other than the firm everyone used to hate: British Gas. This has led to some chuntering over at Southern's parent company SSE. Chief executive Ian Marchant tells City Spy however that it will take British Gas consumers 83 years to get back the money they overpaid in the previous five years when British Gas internal systems problems meant it was the UK's most expensive supplier. How does Marchant know this? “I worked it out while I was lying in bed last night.”

* WHAT is going on at The Savoy? The grand hotel was supposed to reopen after a £100 million makeover around now but that date has been put back until at least the spring of next year. That has meant missing out on the bumper party and dinners season.

* SPOTTED watching Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, turn on the Burlington Arcade Christmas lights: Nicola Horlick. Fresh from sealing the deal to sell the contract for managing the Bramdean Alternatives Fund to Aberdeen Asset Managers for about £5 million, Horlick was on fine form (perhaps not surprising, since, as well as pocketing a large cheque, Horlick's Bramdean Asset Management is being kept on by Aberdeen as a consultant to Bramdean Alternatives for a year). Several hundred people crowded into the narrow space for mulled wine and nibbles. The event, organised by the ageless PR queen Maureen Smith of The Communication Group, was perhaps too much of a success for its own good. It took poor Camilla the best part of an hour to trawl through the arcade full of eager punters and to get to the dais and the light switch.

* AT the end of the recent LCS International Consulting annual healthcare industry conference, a slide flashed up on the screen to announce those present were invited to a drinks reception courtesy of the directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland. “If we're going to get our money's worth for all those bailouts, we'll have to drink £31 billion worth of their champagne,” muttered one ungrateful delegate.

* IT'S not all hellish trips in private jets and pesky helicopter rides for Prince Andrew. Perks of his job as our very special trade representative included a quick pre-Christmas tan topping up in the Maldives. And the latest addition to his bulging treasure chest of items collected on his travels, City Spy is told, is a hamper of the finest soaps and candles from across the Middle East, donated by a local store while the Prince was on a visit to Oman. Storekeeper Eman Al Waaibi said: “We made sure that we added incense burners made by artisans from across the Sultanate.” Of course.

* MEANWHILE, what of Prince Andrew's pal Jeffrey Epstein, the former Bear Stearns star trader? He was released from jail this summer after serving time for soliciting underage prostitutes at his Florida mansion. To the delight of Epstein's camp, one of the law firms representing several girls who are suing the billionaire financier alleging he sexually molested them, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, has spectacularly imploded. Rothstein's former chairman Scott Rothstein faces claims that he fuelled a $1 billion Ponzi scheme by selling or promising to sell involvement in lawsuit settlements that Rothstein were handling. Several former Rothstein lawyers are also representing other girls who assert that Epstein paid them for sexual services, so the firm's plight is manna from heaven to Epstein and his expensively assembled legal team. As Robert Critton, who represents Epstein, said: “How can any [Rothstein] in these civil actions represent its client's interests and give unbiased legal counsel when an outside investor has been promised a financial interest in the outcome of the action?” Yes, how could they?

* Further to my story last week about the long-running spying row involving Hungarian firm TriGranit, a spokesman for Nat Rothschild gets in touch to point out he has not been an investor in the company since June.