Edifying to read that Sir Martin Sorrell of advertising firm WPP is trousering a pay package of £43 million, with the support of 80% of WPP shareholders.

Apparently only 20% refused to back the nice little earner for 2014 at the firm’ general meeting last month, after shareholder advisory consultancy Pirc pointed out that the “excessive” package was 37 times Sir Martin’s base salary.

Sadly most of the shareholders don’t seem to have considered the simple mathematics that for that price they could get 43 top advertising people delighted to earn £1 million a year, any one of which could possibly do as much, or more for the firm than the overpaid Sir Martin. Or how about giving 86 top people £500,000 each?