Editco.net

You all remember Charles Allen, Gerry Robinson's sidekick at Compass Catering then partner in crime at Granada TV, then sole boss at ITV (when he lumbered the business with the CRR cap on its revenues) and then prime mover in the vastly over-priced acquisitions of Capital Radio and Classic FM to form struggling radio outfit Global Radio.

Now our friend Charles, whose contribution to so many media businesses has been, er, negative, has emerged as executive chairman of EMI , the floundering music company financier Guy Hands of Terra Firma bought for a mind boggling £4bn three years ago.

And Elio Leoni-Sceti, the personable Italian whizz kid brought in from Reckitt-Benckiser to add some marketing pizazz to EMI as CEO, is on his designer bike

Leoni-Sceti was on the cover of Management Today this month defending his plans for the business and saying he had great things in store.

Well now he isn't and instead we've got Charlie in the chair and, on past performance, this will be a regime of cut, cut and cut again although Allen is saying he wants to 'develop' the business.

The fact is that Hands paid way over any remotely sensible odds for EMI and the wolves are circling.

Allen's job surely is to dispose of the recorded music business and cling on to EMI as a music publisher, where its impressive back catalogue still makes money. An undertaker, in effect.

As for Leoni-Sceti, he's a bright boy but he's just learned a sharp lesson in the world of heavily-indebted, private equity-owned companies.