London Briefing/Fiona Walsh: I have always felt just a tiny bit responsible for the downfall of Gerald Ratner.

Back in 1991, when I was working for the Sunday Times, I called the jewellery boss one April lunchtime to see if he had any stories up his sleeve. As head of the acquisitive Ratners group, he had a good relationship with the financial press and was always happy to talk.

I was surprised to find him eating a sandwich at his desk, rather than out at lunch. He was working on a speech for the Institute of Directors, he said, but was wondering whether to include any jokes.

Oh yes, I assured him, it's always good to make people laugh.

The now infamous joke - that a sherry decanter set from Ratner's H Samuel chain was "total crap" - ultimately cost him his job and has gone down in history as one of the biggest business gaffes of all time.

He was absolutely right, of course. How could a cut-glass sherry decanter, including six glasses and a silver-plated tray, be anything other than rubbish at £4.99?

It was a joke he had used many times before in interviews, along with another favourite quip about a pair of 99p Ratners earrings being cheaper than a prawn sandwich from M&S, but unlikely to last as long.

But, as he found to his cost, there is a great deal of difference between wisecracking for an interview in the financial pages and standing up before an audience of 6,000 directors at the Royal Albert Hall.

The great British public do not take kindly to being made fun of. Fuelled by some savage tabloid press, there was an instant backlash against the business.

Unluckily for Ratner, his comments coincided with a sharp slump in consumer spending. Ratners tumbled into the red after a disastrous Christmas in 1991 and he eventually exited the company the following November, 18 months after the ill-fated IoD speech.

The fitness fanatic went on to build a successful gym business and later moved back into the jewellery market with his Geraldonline website. (He was denied the use of the Ratner name even though his former company had changed its name to Signet).

But Gerald's heart has always been with his old business, particularly the mass-market H Samuel chain. And now he wants to buy it back.

Half-year results from Signet today will show the H Samuel and Ernest Jones chains are continuing to struggle not only in the face of slower consumer spending but also against competition from retailers such as Argos and online rivals including Geraldonline.

Signet makes three-quarters of its sales in the United States and Ratner is banking on the group's willingness to offload its struggling UK operations.

He is confident he can raise the £200 million (€296 million) or so that would be required to buy the business.

Private equity firms Apax Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts had been weighing up an offer for Signet as a whole but have now withdrawn. However, the UK operations are also thought to have attracted the attentions of the acquisitive Icelandic retailer, Baugur, which already owns Goldsmiths and the upmarket Mappin & Webb.

Baugur, which has just agreed the £351 million takeover of department stores group House of Fraser, has a string of successful UK takeovers under its belt and has made it clear there are more deals on the way.

If Signet will play ball, the Icelandic firm could take the more up-market Ernest Jones chain, leaving H Samuel for Ratner.

Ratner is keen to tie a deal up before the all-important Christmas trading period, when jewellers make the bulk of their money. If he can pull off a deal, it will be a welcome return to the High Street for the man who told the business world's most expensive joke.

Bad news at iSoft may not be over

It will take more than sticking plaster and a bit of bandage to cover up the holes at iSoft, the struggling software group behind the new national electronic patients register, part of the Government's £6.2 billion upgrade of the National Health Service computer systems.

The project has been dogged by delays and iSoft has lurched from one crisis to another, including accounting irregularities and investigation by the UK's regulatory watchdog, the Financial Services Authority.

In the Republic opposition parties have called on the Irish Government to clarify the circumstances of and make a statement about the signing of a €56 million computer contract between the Health Service Executive and iSoft.

At its peak, iSoft was valued at £1 billion, but its shares have crashed by more than 90 per cent this year and the business is now valued at little more than £100 million.

Last week, the group met the deadline - just - for reporting its much-delayed annual results, which showed a whopping £344 million loss. But even its auditor, Deloitte, said it was unable to state whether the accounts gave a true picture of iSoft's financial position.

There was some good news - the group has agreed a deal with its banks for continued financing. And the shares have been lifted by a flurry of takeover speculation, with BT and the American technology firm Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) both tipped as possible buyers.

CSC is already involved in managing part of the huge NHS project, so there would be some logic to a deal.

But there can be no certainty that all the bad news from iSoft is yet out of the way and it would be a brave bidder to take on the business now.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardian newspaper in London