Pembroke: Decked out for a Commons role

FOR SALE: one personalised number plate, HOC 1 ( pounds 10,000) and one 1988 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. Pale blue. One careful owner ( pounds 30,000). Separate offers invited.

Thus runs the ad (they are being advertised separately, actually) in the House of Commons magazine. The vendor is Hall of Cards, the 130- strong chain of greeting card shops that is now owned by Hallmark.

'It used to be our chairman's car,' explains finance director Robert Clarke, referring to the former owner, Ivor Compton.

'But when he sold the business we decided to get rid of it. We are moving from, how should I say, an entrepreneurial company to a more corporate style, where such things seem less appropriate.'

AN INDICATION of the standards by which financial advisers judge themselves can be found in the 1994 Money Marketing Awards. Roger Levitt comes third in the poll for personality of the year. The fallen financier, sentenced to 180 hours' community service and the first person to be banned indefinitely from the investment business, comes straight into the chart behind winner Garry Heath, of the National Federation of independent financial advisers and runner up Godfrey Jillings, chief executive of Fimbra.

Quirky results in the poll are not without precedent. In 1991 John Major won and last year Norman Lamont came fifth.

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PENTOS, the troubled Rymans and Athena group, has appointed Joe Sinyor as managing director of its Dillons bookshop subsidiary. The 36- year-old Mr Sinyor is a former chief executive of Pepe, the jeans group which, even after his cost-cutting, lost pounds 10m in 1992.

Described as urbane and, indeed smooth, the Cambridge graduate is also the brother of Gary Sinyor, director of the cult film success Leon the Pig Farmer. Joe is keeping a low profile at the moment, though the same cannot be said of his brother who crops up in this week's Time Out, London's listings magazine, speaking of raising money for British films. 'All the people I go to for money come from the Home Counties, they all went to Oxbridge and all have beards and I'm getting a bit pissed off.'

STAFF AT Express Newspapers might be thinking films are a relatively safe area of investment after a hot horse-racing tip went horribly wrong last week. The Express has received a tip during Cheltenham for the past couple of years and this year it came in the 2.15 Daily Express Triumph hurdle, a somewhat inappropriate name as it turned out.

As the previous two tips had romped home, staff piled their money on to the 16-1 shot General Mouktar. Rumours were that one staffer put pounds 4,000 on the horse.

Imagine the stunned silence when the nag drifted home a distant 20th in a field of 28. Staff have since been playing down the disappointment. 'There's been a lot of exaggeration about this, but I only lost a hundred or so and and that was one of the heavier bets,' said one advertising team member. 'You win some, you lose some.'

CITY WORKERS keen on pillow fights and pole-jousting should enter a team in the 'Great London Knockout' competition being organised by the Cancer Relief Macmillan Fund. The charity is looking for 30 City teams to help raise pounds 150,000 in the event in London's Battersea Park in September.

Lily-livers with no stomach for the boisterous competition can always settle for some of the other sedate activities on offer such as bungy-running and Sumo wrestling.