Business Diary: Early home win for Hemmings

Trevor Hemmings appears to have the Midas touch when it comes to sporting enterprises. On Tuesday, the day hisPreston North End delisted from the Alternative Investment Market, having been brought into the Blackpool Tower owner's private business empire, the team looked to be in for a rough ride. They found themselves 4-1 down to Leeds after 39 minutes only to pull off an astonishing fightback that saw the final result6-4 in their favour. Score one for Hemmings.

Betfair aims for hole in one

Paddy Power has been the king of daft PR stunts in recent years, but seems to have found a serious rival in Betfair. Despite all the hours of meetings and paper work associated with its forthcoming stock exchange flotation, the betting exchange has still found time to train a flock of eagles and hawks to flybanners of support for Team Europe over the Celtic Manor course during the Ryder Cup. The five-strong flight team has been christened the Betfair Birdies.

BP's starring role on fright night

What could be more fun this Halloween than dressing up as a BP oil spill clean-up man? That's the theory of Alan Geller, anyway. He's the boss of American company Fun World, which makes a whole variety of costumes for festive occasions – Geller has ordered hundreds of the BP jump suits on the basis that people like dressing up as horrible villains at Halloween. Seems a bit harsh to pick on the guys doing the cleaning up, but TonyHayward masks would presumably scare the kids.

BT man turns train spotter

It's a glamorous life working in communications for a blue chip company such as BT – dealing with intelligentquestions from journalists, advising the board on top-level strategy and so on. Just a pity the poor BT press officer which spent yesterday looking into a more mundane matter: an inquiry from a customer who wanted to know the names of the specific railway bridges that appear in the telecoms giant's latest TV advert.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk