Pembroke: Death puts up its kiosks

DEATH cigarettes, the disconcertingly honest ciggies produced by the Enlightened Tobacco Company, have hit the sponsorship trail. The group has teamed up with the Gay Pride Festival in London on Saturday. Death has put pounds 7,000 of sponsorship into the festival, for which it will have the sole cigarettes concession.

The tell-it-like-it-is baccy company, which is run by a former motorcycle importer, BJ Cunningham, will have two sinister black kiosks at the event, topped by skull and crossbone flags flying from 20-foot poles. Death T-shirts will also be on sale, featuring the slogan: 'Death: the honest fag.'

LONDON Docklands Development Corporation did its bit for National Bike to Work Day yesterday. With numbers swelled by the train strike and glorious weather, 100 cyclists puffed into work to be rewarded by an LDDC breakfast at Millwall docks. A suitably healthy selection of melon, strawberries and croissants was washed down with coffee and orange juice.

The corporation's chief executive, Eric Sorenson, donned his cycle clips (although he only came in from Islington). Star perfomer was another LDDC man, Richard Beeching, who biked in from Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

PSION, maker of those yuppie personal organiser things, has lost its business angel. Dr Theo Loub, a South African- born diamond dealer, is to leave the board after 10 years. Dr Loub, who is a personal friend of Psion's chairman, David Potter, invested pounds 500,000 in the fledgling business in 1984. His 1.7 million shares are now worth around pounds 5m. Dr Loub plans to spend more time running his diamond business in London's Hatton Garden. 'I'd been there for 10 years and it just seemed inappropriate to carry on,' he says.

SIR DAVID CHAPMAN, the newly appointed corporate development director at the northern stockbroker Wise Speke, must be hoping his new job starts a little more promisingly than his last. Sir David was High Sheriff of Tyne and Wear last year and his first duty was a tricky one: a night on patrol with the local police.

The first call was to a disturbance at a city nightspot. The Panda car screeched to a halt disgorging the policemen, to be followed, the idea was, by the game Sheriff. Only he couldn't open the door. The poor man was left scrabbling around inside the Ford Fiesta trying to manoeuvre around the gear stick. To add insult to injury a shifty-looking bystander, taking the Sheriff for a criminal being escorted to the nick, deftly opened the jammed door and told the illustrious knight to scarper.