City Diary: Theatre king Sir Cameron Mackintosh keeps his hit business in the family The City can expect a downturn in the daily poetry from Cantor Index veteran David Buik over the coming weeks. The "terrific romantic and great nationalist" becomes increasingly morose as the days draw closer to Remembrance Sunday on November 11, so from Monday he plans to preface his morning bulletins with works by Great War poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Buik has started every state-of-the-markets briefing with a poem for the last 12 years, and tries hard not to repeat the same ode twice. "If I do, I am either suffering from senile dementia or I have just forgotten," he tells me. Montgomery's Mirror reflection Trinity Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Certainly not the newspaper group's former chief David Montgomery, says his ex-colleague Roy Greenslade, who pulls no punches in his analysis of the "cold and calculating" executive's swoop on Daily Mail and General Trust's regional division Northcliffe Media, as backed by hedge fund chief Crispin Odey. Media commentator Greenslade first crossed paths with Montgomery when the pair were both sub-editors on the Daily Mirror in the 1970s, and relations have been frosty ever since. "It's fair to say that he and I don't get along at all well at the personal level," writes Greenslade in his latest Evening Standard column, before reminding readers of his rival's "less than thrilling" track record at Mirror Group and Mecom. "A charitable view of that venture was that he was unlucky with timing," writes Greenslade waspishly on the latter. "My experience of Monty is that he learns from his mistakes," he adds. And few people have had as many comebacks as him. No doubt Montgomery will even the scores with a further "comeback" of his own. All bets are off for bigots All bets were off at Paddy Power yesterday, after an email trail worthy of BBC satire The Thick of It leaked out from the bookmaker's spinners prematurely. The behind-the-scenes glimpse shows the firm struggling to price the favourite for "Bigot of the Year," one of the categories at last night's awards held by the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity Stonewall. "I actually couldn't name a favourite for the bigot one, they are all really offensive people," emailed one Paddy Power employee, who also had the brainwave: "I could do "Next to Sponsor Stonewall Awards" and we can hint support for the LBGT community by saying it's regretful that the banks can't continue sponsoring them or something?" Slow down, said the team's line manager in Dublin. "Just thinking we might be putting ourselves in the firing line for this one," he emailed the group. Thought I'd flag it up. Too late, alas. That same spinner later had to downplay: "There's always some lively conversation between us. In this case, we couldn't resist giving the Stonewall awards a bit of support.