Marks & Spencer is in the news today, as fresh chief executive Marc Bolland faces the company's shareholders at his first AGM.

No doubt the board will be grilled about Bolland's boggling £15m package, the monster amount required to persuade him to jump ship from Morrisons. One might reasonably ask why the M&S board, well-rewarded as they undoubtedly are, weren't able to groom some suitable talent from within during the Stuart Rose years, either?

Anyhow, aside from the eye-watering excesses of boardroom pay, it will be interesting to learn what other topics shareholders come up with today. Were I to be present at the Royal Festival Hall I'd put aside the usual probing questions about underwear quality, don my print anorak and ask:

a)     How is the M&S personalised greetings card offering performing?

b)     Has the move into supplying non-M&S branded goods been worth it?

Re point (b) I popped into my local M&S food store the other day and recoiled in horror at the sight of Colgate toothpaste and other household brands on its shelves.

M&S is so very, very good at packaging and point-of-sale design, and the fact that everything was an own brand gave them total control over the shopping environment, creating a harmonious whole where every colour palette and packaging design choice worked together beautifully.

The inclusion of third-party brands is a jarring intrusion, to say the least, from the point-of-view of this shopper. From very, very good to very, very wrong.