The City legal fraternity is having a rare time recounting a tale about Freshfields — of all the law firms perhaps the one known for working its people hardest. It concerns an associate at the “magic circle” practice who fell down the stairs after working long hours and the suspension of her boss. That bit has been recounted in the legal press but City Spy hears that the story doing the rounds is that the staff member returned to work immediately after falling and continued to put in a punishing schedule with broken ribs. In the end, she became so sick with a chest infection that she ended up in hospital and did finally take time off.

* MEANWHILE, there is much egg on face at Farrers, the firm that enjoys the reputation of being the Queen's solicitors. Two of its trainees went to Bristol University as part of its milk round programme, reports RollOnFriday, the legal website. They prepared a memo, containing their impressions of students — and giving them scores. Among the comments was “okay. Not very knowledgeable; Afro-Caribbean origin”. Another was “Middle Eastern/Canadian; okay; overly keen but had done his research”. As well as ethnic backgrounds, their subjects' sex played a part. One would-be female lawyer was described as “sweet; soft spoken; good questions” and another as “very sweet; 2nd-year law; mature in attitude”. Other qualities that stood out (this is Farrers, after all), were, about a woman student: “v bubbly. Good conversationalist. Very knowledgeable about sports”, and “really knowledgable; knew all about Titian; was interested in art; very good”.

New history boy on the block

Tonight, City Spy is invited to the prestigious old-money Brooks's Club for an exclusive book launch.

The occasion is the launch party for a hefty, 700-page tome entitled Empires at War: A History of Modern Asia since World War II.

The book describes its author, Francis Pike as a “historian” although it's not easy turning up any previous works by the 55-year-old author. Surprisingly, for someone who is presumably concerned with accuracy, the blurb omits Pike's unfortunate involvement with what was one of Asia's largest banks: the Hong Kong-based Peregrine Investment Holdings. This is clearly one of those common lapses of memory and has nothing to do with the fact that Peregrine went spectacularly bust in 1998 with estimated debts of $400 million (Pike had been Chairman of Peregrine India and a director of Pergerine Asset Management from 1993-97).

* ASKED how he would solve our burgeoning financial deficit, Britain's leading non-executive mullet and a former Goat in Gordon Brown's government of all the talents (and an ex-boss of the CBI), Lord Jones plumps for legalising prostitution.

* AT Persimmon, the housebuilder's 2,500 staff each get a turkey at Xmas.

* AN MP has called on the 50% top rate tax rate to be scrapped.

“We should cut the top rate of tax,” he says. “Raising the top rate to 50% was done for political reasons not economic ones, the main problem being that the political reasons were bad ones.

“The problem with soak-the-rich tax policies is that they don't work.

“Personally, I couldn't care less if Tracey Emin leaves Britain but we ought to be worried about the hedge-fund advisers who are taking the same route to our lower-taxed neighbours.”

You might be forgiven for assuming that these comments emanate from a right-wing Tory who challenging shadow chancellor George Osborne's feebleness for saying the 50% rate would be retained by the Tories.

You would be wrong: they're from a very brave Labour MP, Greg Pope.

* WHAT odds on Betfair finally getting to market? The betting exchange has been a flotation candidate for much of the past five years. Recent growing speculation culminated in the Reuters news agency running a report that Rothschild is close to being appointed as a listing adviser. “It's just not true,” says Betfair managing director Mark Davies. “Speculation about a flotation comes up regularly. But we are not about to appoint an adviser.” Unfortunately Betfair isn't running a book on the float on its own website so City Spy can't check to what extent punters believe him.

* GOSSIPS have it that the need for William Hill to have a rights issue and then a bumper bond issue has done for Simon Lane, the finance director whose departure has been announced. When Lane joined Hills four years ago it was from CenterParcs, where he had been an executive director of a company which had suffered a torrid time in the two years since its flotation, leaving shareholders out of pocket.
Before that, Lane had been with profit warning-prone foods group Albert Fisher. Prior to that, he was with Safeway where poor trading saw it taken over by rival Morrisons.
Maybe Lane just likes taking on tough jobs…

Teaching an old robber new tricks

WORD reaches City Spy that old rogue Ronnie Biggs is up in arms over a magazine currently on sale which claims to be “at last, the inside story” of the Great Train Robbery.

Published by Green Umbrella exclusively for WH Smith, the organ has roused the wrath of Ronnie.

“When they can't even get the number of robbers who took part right, what hope is there? It's factually inaccurate, didn't have any input from anyone involved, and cheaply done.

“Say what you like about the train robbers, they were never cheap!” Ron's son, Mike says, adding: “They are charging £6.99 for it, which as my dad says, is daylight robbery.”