‘What’s he doing at Davos?” A question from my wife – the first of two (questions from wife that is) with which I hope to detain you here.

“He’s not the Chancellor now,” she harrumphed at the sight of George Osborne at the annual gathering of top politicos and business folk in the Swiss ski resort. “Probably job seeking,” I replied, adding my customary puzzlement over why the world’s movers and shakers choose to meet in a mountain resort rather than, say, Birmingham or Dusseldorf. Strange, that.

A day or two later it was reported that Mr Osborne, while remaining MP for Tatton, Cheshire, is joining BlackRock, “the world’s biggest investment-managing firm,” as a “senior adviser.” Most likely the role was sewn up before Davos which would explain his presence.

Anyhow, although Mr Osborne’s BlackRock remuneration has not been revealed it seems he has already given speeches for the company, during a US tour that earned him £600,000. Of course Mr Osborne’s aims are entirely laudable.

“BlackRock wants better outcomes for pensioners and savers, and I want to help them deliver that,” the ex-Chancellor explains. So thank you, Mr Osborne, and we note the approval of your part-time role by the Government’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, complete with its stern warning (not that one is needed) designed to ensure absolute probity: “It will be written into your contract that you will not be expected to be involved in any work for, or seek work with, the UK Government.”

Clean as a whistle then. But hey, what about Mr Osborne’s 65,000 Tatton constituents? No doubt he will give them all the attention they need. Which suggests, as in other examples like William Hague, that we are grossly overstocked with MPs, and the intended reduction of just 50, from the total of 650, is not nearly enough.

A cut of a third might be nearer the mark.

THE other question from my wife? It comes frequently, with mounting exasperation, during every Wimbledon. “Why don’t they serve and volley?” She remembers Lew Hoad, Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, exciting serve-and-volleyers all. “Modern rackets have made the game too fast now,” I tell her. “Serve and volley is only for crisis points - absolute desperation.”

So that’s another thing I’ve been proved wrong about. In knocking out world number 1 Andy Murray in the Australian Open, world number 50 Mischa Zverev served and volleyed an unprecedented (for the modern era) 119 times. It helped him collect a match-tipping 65 points at the net.

When serve and volley entered the game big time, with Hoad and Rosewall its leading exponents, it was regarded as a brutal assault on traditional (base line) tennis. The victory of the artistic Czech player Jaroslov Drobny over Rosewall in the 1954 Wimbledon final was seen as keeping the barbarians at bay.

But serve and volley soon came to distinguish the men’s game from the women’s. With the revelation that it is not dead, the top players will be honing their techniques.