Sweet success

Alumnus to be proud of No: 56 is Alan Sugar, busy divesting himself of the somewhat depreciated stock of his eponymous company (A. M. S. TRADing) at the same time as enjoying unintended national hero status for having made Terry Venables available to manage the England football team.

Mr Sugar is of course one of Britain's most famous graduates of the University of Life (widely believed to have been taken over by De Montfort), his skill in financial manipulation widely ascribed to his early days as a barrow boy.

But isn't it equally likely that his initiation in the dark arts of making numbers and money do what you want came during a less-reported spell in the statistical department of the late, lamented Department for Education and Science?