Just like in Putin’s Russia, journalists are not always terribly popular in the City. One Herbert Smith partner this week engaged in a cunning telephonic identity-swap to throw Diary spies off the scent of a big story – denying flat-out he was the partner in question and bouncing them back to the central switchboard.

A second call went through to voicemail, where the fiendish deception became clear as the very same individual’s now-familiar tones urged callers to leave him a message.