A surprising, and ironic, vote of confidence yesterday in traditional newspapers — from two people who might be regarded as among the biggest threats to the survival of the print media, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. Page and Brin still believe in a real future for the printed press, they reveal. But it is hardly a ringing endorsement: Larry gets all his news needs fulfilled online, while Sergey reads The New York Times – but only on Sundays. “It’s nice,” says Brin. The World Economic Forum is nothing if not a platform for pursuit of enlightened self-interest. So plaudits for chutzpah go to Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, the advertising titan, for seizing an opportune moment for special pleading yesterday.

Delivering a vote of thanks to Alistair Darling, after the Trade Secretary addressed business leaders at a CBI lunch, Mr Sorrell drew the Cabinet minister’s attention to the fact that the Government has dropped from being Britain’s biggest advertiser in terms of how much it spends on ads in relation to its turnover, to just third place. “Maybe election year will be our salvation,” Mr Sorrell said, hopefully.

Despite being among the most prominent socialists at Davos’s festival of capitalism, Ken Livingstone is one of the few bigwigs to sport a tie. The London Mayor says the neckwear is insulation in a chilly climate. “It’s cold, I’m 61, and when you’re 61, you’ll wear a tie in winter, too,” he protests. Davos delegates chuckled at the tale of web satirists’ latest tilt at Second Life, the virtual reality world now inhabited, in theory at least, by as many as three million people — or their avatars at least. While Second Life likes to boast of its millions of members, Sun Microsystems’ top scientific guru, John Gage, amused the audience here by telling them of the online wags who recently ripped off Second Life's life to boast of their own creation, “1st Life” — with its own 6.5 billion unique users.

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