Brand image is all: what the business says and does must reflect its image, failing which consumers will regard it as a fraud. All the more so where the business is closely associated with an individual. What would happen to the Virgin brand if it were to come out that, far from being an iconoclastic daredevil, Richard Branson’s idea of a good time is a cup of cocoa and an Agatha Christie novel? In the case of Melissa’s, the highly successful Western Cape-based Melissa’s Food Shop, (there’s a branch at a posh address near you) the brand image is very much one of wholesome country goodness and old fashioned values. Melissa's added ingredients have cooked up a great brand image.

Mammoth US defence contractor Navistar Defense appeared in the Cape in September, pressing the flesh in preparation for pitches for new multi-billion-rand SANDF truck and armoured vehicle contracts.Now SA designers, Jaco van Heerden and Armour Technology Services, accuse US defence contractor of stealing their ideas. He has laid several criminal charges against Navistar.

Ornate gates and a 24/7-manned guardhouse cauterise the wealthy residents of this exclusive stretch of Illovo’s 5th Avenue from the rest of the world. But closed gates could not protect Karen Brouze from the enemy within - her allegedly abusive and philandering maybe-billionaire husband David Brouze.

Despite his much-denied great wealth, businessman David keeps himself out of the public eye. But in private, the former head boy of King David High School, who turned 47 on February 6, leads a colourful lifestyle now that he’s departed from Karen and number 32 5th Avenue. He’s got his new R20-million bachelor pad in Joburg’s Hyde Park, a R30m Cape Town holiday apartment at Clifton, a Ferrari and – so his about-to-be ex-wife claims – a brand new 21-year-old squeeze.

Now lurid accusations - and fish - fly in billionaire's bid for access to youngest child.

If you follow the local news you may well feel that the great and the good abuse the legal system shockingly. But even the lowest of the low sometimes get it right too. The brothers Kotze, it transpires, are a bad lot, with a string of convictions for theft, fraud and assault. So don't go to St Michael Pierre Kotze unless you want to turn your dream home into a jerry-built nightmare.

Take your will seriously. Along with death and taxes, one other thing is certain: if you don’t, nobody else will. Because there really is no such thing as free will in the banking world.

The sheriff is poised to pounce and seize the Eversheds chairman's luxurious office furniture. And a recently leaked document - from the Eversheds chairman’s office - sheds some light on the abrupt resignation from the firm of leading attorney Imraan Haffegee. Haffegee joined Eversheds in 2008 – only to bail out the following year. He considered that his employers had been cooking the books and he put together a document described as his Parting Thoughts, which he intended to send to various people, but after he mentioned this to the HR director, Nikki Webb, he was pursuaded to withhold it from the black directors.

Last month’s noseweek might have left you thinking Discovery has cornered the market in crap medical aid service. Not quite. In fact, the market is fiercely contested. Discovery is not the only medical aid that makes you sick. Momentum Health certainly had no idea how to deal with their member, Martin Horn, who paid his premiums by debit order and yet his cover was suspended under the pretext that he owed them money.

Are the investigative skills of Barry Badenhorst, the Clouseau-style head of group forensic services at Rand Water, to be put to the test again? A pesky nipper is lurking in the murky executive pond and snapping at the big fish. Now the recidivist Pimpernel has struck again – and this time the target is the public utility’s chief executive Percy Sechemane.

The controversial Gordon's Bay mover and political chameleon, Anton Fuchs, is back in the Democratic Alliance – evidently aiming to be the area’s ward councillor come the next local government elections. What tricks does he have up his sleeve this time?

One of noseweek’s (many) contacts in the legal fraternity kindly sent us a transcript of an interview conducted by one James Lewis of the International Bar Association with legendary Watergate journalist Bob Woodward. Much of what he says applies equally here in South Africa.