Dashwood: Can headhunters tempt Carolyn McCall to jet off to a new FTSE 100 post? Another leaking pipeline for BP boss BP chief executive Bob Dudley knows all about mending pipelines. So the oil boss was a natural choice to give his thoughts on "fixing the leaking pipeline of female talent at middle management" at last week's Women's Business Forum, where he revealed that female graduate intake at BP now stands at a third, up from 25pc a few years ago. Progress indeed. But in the week that boardroom reformer Lord Davies" latest report showed that the number of women on the boards of FTSE 100 businesses remains well short of his 25pc target, BP, too, has ground to make up. Dashwood counts only two female faces in the pipeline of the oil major's 14-strong board - an under-par 14pc. Good to see Barclays coming out of its sackcloth and ashes phase. The under-fire bank put on its glad-rags last Thursday night as the lead sponsor of an evening of "dazzling showbiz extravagance" at London's O2 Arena - and you don't get more showbiz than the boyband Blue, who performed at this primetime TV-style affair, Newsroom's Got Talent. Those who usually present, rather than make, the news, were the headline acts, with the likes of Channel 4's Jon Snow and ITN chief John Hardy "entertaining" corporate guests with floor-filling turns. The winner of this year's charity dance-off was ITV News. Triple 10s all round. Sam Laidlaw laid low for energy dinner The energy sector's annual dinner hosted by headhunter Harvey Nash was a well-oiled affair, with Lord Digby Jones, the former trade minister, debating the merits of fracking at Mayfair's Sartoria restaurant as execs from oil companies great and small worked the room. In the week that SSE announced its 8.2pc rise in domestic bills, there was one notable blackout from the 100-strong guestlist, however. Sam Laidlaw, the chief of British Gas owner Centrica and a trustee of the evening's charity appeal in aid of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, called the organisers at 7pm to say he had been "caught up in a meeting." Eleventh-hour price hike negotiations, perhaps?