Sinden relished the character, not just the role; and we were bound to relish the performance in turn.Two years ago at the National Theatre he had also been the making (I believe) of a revival of Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple Sinden played Major Swindon. You could watch that visage for signs of inner amusement, for hints that he was also enjoying himself and they never, in my experience, came.Behind the corpulent figure, the strong, dark eyes, the innocent glare, the huge head, and the tendency to strut about self-importantly was not the least intimation that we ought to giggle.There are straight faces and straight faces in the theatre, and Jeremy Sinden knew how to keep his straighter than most. Never more so, of course, than as the absurdly vainglorious Toad in Jeremy Sams’s recent revival of Alan Bennett’s version of The Wind in the Willows (Old Vic, 1996).One has seen Toads of the old, self-preening sort prancing about the stage without making any kind of contact with the audience because they were trying so hard to raise laughter and had not Sinden’s blessed capacity to seem so free of self-awareness. This was perhaps owing to that rare ability to conceal his awareness that he was meant to be funny.In other words he could keep a straight face not only physically, but psychologically. Like his father, Jeremy Sinden was accused more than once of playing to the audience rather than playing his part.Nevertheless, young Jeremy, though showing no signs of the paternal range as either a comedian or tragedian, could sometimes be far funnier in his own right. What did surprise young Jeremy’s well-wishers was that he showed every sign of becoming a player of quality in his own right.It is true that father and son also shared a mannerism of gazing at the house as if to watch for its reaction rather than trusting to it.

Certainly his parents, both actors, both aware of the ups and downs of the player’s life, saw no reason for him to join their profession.
But young Jeremy wasn’t going to be put off. He had seen glimpses of the good theatrical life – or rather the film star’s life, for his father made a name in films long before the theatre – and would have a go.That he should come to resemble his father in both looks and acting style, sharing a temperamental exuberance and a taste for the theatrical stance, was perhaps not surprising. As Donald Sinden’s elder son, Jeremy might have been tempted to take another theatrical tack since the risk of “oderous” comparisons was obvious. Jeremy Sinden was a chip off the old block: a bit of a buffoon; an able comedian; a stylish farceur; and a man of the theatre who did not disdain the bold touch, the emphatic gesture, and a sense of timing which took enough account of the audience sometimes to seem to outstare it

This relish for the stage was in the blood. As Professor Mayer suggested, the stakeholder bandwagon may even be getting under way in the UK just at the wrong moment.If anything the flexibility of the British system for running companies, with its single-tier boards, powerful executive managements and widely dispersed shareholdings, may have some special advantages of its own at a time of accelerating technical change and competition..

In other words, Labour has backed away from radical legislation on corporate governance.British companies may not be run any better than their counterparts in Germany, but cases such as KHD make it hard to believe they are significantly worse. But after Daimler-Benz, it is hard to take this line of argument very seriously.There was, of course, never any likelihood of the Conservative government importing two-tier boards to the UK, since opposition to the idea is firmly entrenched throughout British industry.And despite the rhetoric from the Labour Party about a stakeholder society, there seems little inclination to force-feed British industry on German methods, and the earlier enthusiasm among some of the party’s policymakers has been discarded.Alistair Darling, the City spokesman, made clear in a speech last week that Labour was now inclined to build on the British tradition and not try to import German patterns for running companies. The top tier, or supervisory board, is drawn from a variety of interests, including bankers, shareholders and employees. Since the supervisory board knows the company better than outsiders, it should in theory be in a better position than anyone else to monitor the performance of management.The case for the German system is that it avoids what one enthusiast called “the expensive absurdity” of having to wait for a hostile takeover bid to get anything done about a management that has gone wrong. Managers and shareholders are now looking abroad for new ideas to help them overcome the rigidities and inefficiencies of their own system.At the heart of German corporate governance is the two-tier board.

The significance of Deutsche Bank’s problems is that it has fallen down in its role as a large shareholder rather than as banker to the companies in trouble.The lessons have not been overlooked in Germany. But it is a fact that ownership and influence in German industry are much more complex than they seem at first sight.So are the banking relationships, in a country where a large proportion of the banks are owned by regional and local governments rather than private shareholders.The idealised and, until recently, influential view of the German system is that bankers ensure that managers in industry have the finance for long-term investment and are shielded from the short-term pressures that stock markets bring to bear on British and American companies.They exercise their benevolent influence at two levels: by sitting on supervisory boards and by supplying finance to the executive management.Colin Mayer, an Oxford professor and one of the leading researchers in the area, pointed out in a paper last week for the left-of-centre Institute of Public Policy Research that major involvement of the banks in German companies in fact applied to only a small sector of German industry.The reality is that there are high levels of concentration and control of German companies both by family shareholders and by other companies that own stakes, rather than by banks.Indeed, it is beginning to look as if the question of bank involvement in German industry is something of a red herring. Indeed, Mr Kopper is head of Daimler-Benz’s supervisory board, and shareholders took the not unreasonable view that he ought to have known something about the problems earlier.It is not just Deutsche’s reputation as one of the bluest of blue-chip banks that has been damaged. The series of corporate embarrassments involving the bank have also shown up the weaknesses of the once much-praised German system of corporate governance, and shaken the confidence of some of the enthusiasts for importing German methods to the UK.Many of the Labour Party’s stakeholding ideas can be traced back to favourable analyses of the German system for company ownership and control, in which owners share influence with bankers and workers.Curiously, in the light of his role in recent events, Mr Kopper himself has been one of the sternest critics of the German system, and a debunker of what he sees as the myths that circulate abroad about the dominant role of the banks in German industry.This may seem odd, given Deutsche’s deep involvement with KHD, Metallgesellschaft, Schneider and Daimler, troubled companies where his bank does indeed have a powerful direct interest.