Be still our beating hearts! The cheap thrills in this gig can be few and far between. The expensive ones are plentiful, the cheap ones, not so much. After all, if politics is showbusiness for ugly people then business can often be showbiz for the charismatically challenged.

So imagine our delight at receiving an email from Elliott Management's Michael O'Looney – the dreamboat director of comms for gazillionaire Paul Singer's activist shareholder outfit currently making a tilt for our very own big miner, BHP.