Week Ending: Ex-Tesco Takeover at Morrisons? Real housewives & more

ANDY Higginson, the Mancunian former Tesco finance director who is now chairman at ailing Yorkshire grocer Morrisons, is hotly tipped to turn to one of his former colleagues as a replacement for the axed Dalton Phillips as CEO.

Leading the field with odds of 4/6 is David Potts – who like Higginson is also Manchester born – and who started life as a shelf stacker at Tesco and over more than 30 years worked his was up to the board.

It’ll be interesting to see if Potts land the role – or indeed if Higginson will allow it. While both men share a birthplace, their footballing allegiances are divided. Higginson is an avid Manchester United fan, while Potts rarely misses a match at The Etihad to cheer on his beloved Blues.

Other former Tesco stalwarts linked with the role by Paddy Power are Laurie McIlwee (6/1) and Richard Brasher (8/1).

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Week Ending was delighted to receive a text message late last Thursday night from an unknown number inviting me to meet the Prime Minister at an industrial estate in Warrington the following day.

When further details from the Number 10 press office were duly emailed, I were stunned to see the sender was one Alastair Campbell.

I thought perhaps I was on to a sensational scoop – ‘Cameron hires ex-Blair spin-meister’ perhaps?- but no such luck. When I duly arrived at Warrington I was greeted by a polite, clearly over-worked chap, whose demeanour was a long way from that of the snarling, former hack of the same name, who was so synonomous with New Labour.

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THE ‘Old Money’ members of the Cheshire set – you know, the crowd who attend polo matches, enjoy opera in Delamere Forest, and so on, must have been reaching for the drinks cabinet for a stiff G&T, as they viewed the first episode of ‘The Real Housewives of Cheshire’.

The show, broadcast on ITVBe, is focused on what can only be described as a larger-than-life coven of new-monied, fake-tanned and botoxed- WAGs and their friends.

It was totally air-headed stuff. The major plot-line centred on whether one ex-footballer’s wife was trying to blag some freebie tickets to a charity ball from another.

It was about as real as snow in the Sahara and hardly a ringing endorsement for all that is great and good about the fine county of Cheshire.