Media leadership, lesson one – the wine cellar

The National Magazine Company's new Gallic chief executive, Arnaud de Puyfontaine, certainly has his priorities in the right place. Speaking at a meet-and-greet at Soho Hotel last night, where he is staying until he can find a home in the UK, he proved you can take the Frenchman out of France but you can't take France out of the Frenchman. First thing on the agenda for Arnaud's new London gaff is to install a wine cellar. And none of that mucky foreign wine, oh no - de Puyfontaine showed a healthy disrespect for (a) white wine and (b) Australian wine. His tipple of choice is bordeaux and, at a stretch in summer, perhaps a beaujolais or sancerre. Monkey assumes he kept his distaste for Aussie wine to himself when he took part in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race a few years back. Anything could have happened in those vast southern oceans.