Frayling pictured at his big, new job

We’re pinning our hopes on Christopher Frayling to take the Design Council to new heights of influence. But the photos that accompanied last week’s announcement of his appointment as the council’s chairman-in-waiting suggest he was caught rather short by the announcement.

Let’s hope the ill-judged shot – one of three compromising poses around the Design Council red cube – don’t mark a return to the publicity stunts that surrounded John Sorrell’s accession to the council ‘throne’, back in the mid-1990s.

Designers love to have fun, but circus acts are better suited to the Dome than to the serious business arena.