City Diary: Toy town operator makes child's play of West Coast rail bid What next for a departing housebuilder? Persimmon's exiting chief Mike Farley is planning a long break when he steps down in April after almost 30 years with the company, as announced yesterday. "The first plan is a long holiday with my wife, this time with no BlackBerry," he tells me. That will be a bit of a shock to the system. And then the house in France needs a "bit of work." You can take the man out of the £2.5bn housebuilder ... Marissa's motivational moves Dance monkey, dance. Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer is punishing executives who are insufficiently enthused by the firm's staff motivational programme by making them dance for colleagues" "enjoyment." People and development manager Jackie Reses and her team had to perform the Gangnam routine at the company's California HQ, according to reports, with onlookers noting Reses had some "decent moves." Unsurprisingly, employee belief in the "future vision of the company," as revealed in the latest Yahoo Employee Engagement Survey, is also "decent." Although the 32 points increase in Mayer's happiness index came off a low base - the 2011 survey was sent to staff the week that Mayer's predecessor, Carol Bartz, was fired. From red-button technology to the red light district. Tech geeks turned on by the gadgetry at the world's biggest consumer electronics trade show this week have an appetite for the ladies too, it emerges. The ladies of the night, that is - Sheri's Playground, one of Nevada's legal brothels, looks forward to the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas because of the 75pc revenue increase it brings. That's a "huge spike," apparently. Eight is the magic number Tullett Prebon godfather Terry Smith is turning to dead American presidents for guidance. His New Year greetings card quotes Abraham Lincoln: "The great point is to bring [people] the real facts." So what are these "real facts"? It turns out Smith has also been studying the 1960s US sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, and has applied the show's character Jed Clampett's mantra that "everyone knows zeroes don't mean anything" to the UK's economic ills. If you take eight zeroes off the UK government's revenue, spending and debt figures for 2011, goes Smith's magic formula, then - hey presto - one arrives at "remarkably household-sized sums." Why hasn't the Chancellor thought of this?