Walsh or Moody? Our annual reviews are approaching and Karoline (with a K) is openly talking about classifying everyone in the agency as one of the two Pauls.

If you are a (Diageo) Walsh (salary +59% in 2011) you’re on the fast track to account handling glory and may even get a pay rise yourself this year (“up to 0.4%” in our case). If you’re a (Britvic) Moody (-53%) then you are effectively cast into the outer darkness (rather like working in Chelmsford), banished to the British Meat account (summer offal initiative), and given an extra-strong bin bag ready for when the time comes to clear your desk.

Which camp you end up in depends not on anything pertinent, like ability or talent, but rather a Kafka-esque cloud of perceived slights, half-truths and misunderstandings. At the moment I’m on the side of the angels, largely because Karoline thinks I was at the Oscars (actually it was Oscar’s Bistro in Leamington Spa) and thus connected to the glitterati.

Obviously, I wouldn’t normally go to Leamington Spa, more naturally the home of the gutterati, but this was new business, the altar on which standards get sacrificed. So it was best chest forward and the grim fascination of an evening talking ready meals with a man with a ginger toupee. He’s already signed up to the Responsibility Deal, though clearly not when it comes to his hands.

Good news for nut brokers in The Daily Mail (“as opposed to nutters, its usual constituency”, quips Miranda). There will be a run on Brazil nuts among middle-aged men following the news that they can prevent prostate cancer. It didn’t say whether or not you’re supposed to shell them before insertion though.