No good deed goes unpunished. A row has grown between Dr Pepper, the soft drinks group, and Guns N’ Roses, the heavy metal rock group. As you may know, I venture into areas of pop culture with caution and a large cavalry escort. But the group has apparently been working on its latest work, Chinese Democracy, since Mao was a lad. In March, Dr Pepper, in an attempt to gain publicity from this long gestation, offered to give every American a free bottle of pop if the album came out in 2008 (are they still called albums?).

This probably looked like a safe bet at the time, but the fires of creation burnt bright and the thing was out, to indifferent reviews, last month.

Needless to say, Dr Pepper was trampled in the rush. The website offering the coupons ground to a halt. Now the group’s music industry lawyer – don’t those three words strike a note of terror? – is threatening action unless Dr Pepper apologises in full-page ads and hands out more free drinks. A spokesman said the company was “disappointed”, adding: “We wish Guns N’ Roses the best with their album.” Through his clenched teeth, presumably.

The battle of shipping stock to Zavvi’s Potemkin

Zavvi, which sells DVDs and CDs, has been left short of stock by Woolworths’ troubles, to the benefit of HMV. The Oriel Securities retail team went to two Zavvi stores this week, one at Bluewater, and reports signs of them “desperately trying to hide stock issues” by displaying box sets and T-shirts. A sort of retail Potemkin Village?

The battle of the sexes, again

In the blue corner: Nicola Horlick

Nicola Horlick has been pondering the real reason for the credit crunch. It’s all down to men not fighting wars any more, the chief executive of Bramdean Assets tells Management Today, as part of one of those tiresome colloquies about whether things would be better if women were in charge.

Relative peace in Europe in recent times has meant that the energy young men previously expended on warfare has gone into finance, she explains. “This is the new battlefield. It is no surprise to me that things got out of control [don’t remember you pointing it out beforehand, though, Nicola]. It was a huge power game, where more and more risk was being taken, with vast rewards to the winners. It was no longer to do with serving one’s country; it was each man to himself and a game of trying to amass incredible wealth in the shortest time possible.”

Women are less concerned with grabbing as much as they can, she says. “I have absolutely no doubt that the world would have looked totally different if women had been in charge.” It’s a theory. But history suggests that those few female rulers to have risen to prominence were not significantly better behaved than their male counterparts.

I and my colleagues have been plagued by a pointless and vapid “survey” from Barclays Bank “proving” that coffee shops are unusually resilient in the financial downturn. Hundreds of these wretched things come in daily, “proving” people are spending on this, not spending on that, switching into or out of this or that job . . . Most are clearly self-serving, and can be dispatched with a press of the delete button. Barclays’ latest offering is more persistent, coming back like a wasp to the jam pot. Why are you telling me this? Oh, I see. Coffee Republic, which oddly enough claims sales are holding up in the financial downturn, has just finished a shares issue to raise fresh cash. This will be used to eliminate its bank debt. With Barclays.

Courvoisier, the brandy maker, today announces its pick of entrepreneurs most likely to survive the recession. Sod’s Law, backed up by a long history, suggests that some will go bust in short order. I wonder how many fresh young faces are being thus condemned.

Christmas is coming, and you never know, there could be one of these in your stocking. As I have pointed out before, before something so ludicrously useless can hit the stands, earnest committees of marketing men have to sit down and agree solemnly that, yes, there is, indeed, a market for nasal hair clippers shaped like a finger. Someone has to design them. The product has to be sourced, probably from China, and what on earth do they make of a financial system so bloated and extravagant that it has money to waste on this sort of thing? And I know from experience that any number of you out there will now want to buy one. Try Amazon.com. Don’t bother me. I give up. Next piece of rubbish tomorrow, probably.

The Serious Fraud Office lost its Lords Appeal this year, but the news was drowned out by the Budget. The SFO tried again, and the Appeal Court decision blocking this coincided with the Queen’s Speech. In any other department one might wonder about burying bad news . . .

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