Hard on the heels of Lucy Kellaway’s research into CEO traits (see ‘Handed success on a trait’ below) comes some research from LinkedIn which appears to reveal that chief executives tend to have ‘boring’ first names.

When it comes to the top job, being called Ed is fine but if your name is Tarquin you’re a hopeless non-starter. According to Karen Higginbottom, who is writing about this for Edge magazine, the most popular CEO names are: Peter, Bob, Jack, Bruce and Fred.

Comment: So, on this showing, I’m perfectly fitted for a CEO role. I think I’ll just wait for the calls to come in from the City headhunters…