If Seven thought the Tim Worner-Amber Harrison sex scandal was going to go away quietly, they clearly didn't count on it becoming a cultural meme.
Witness the seeping of the issue into two very different events on Wednesday evening.
The first involved Diane Smith-Gander – AGL and Wesfarmers board member, former chair of Transfield, immediate past president of Chief Executive Women – an organisation representing the country's most powerful women in business.
Speaking to Ali Moore on ABC's Lateline, Smith-Gander covered off the under-representation of women on ASX 200 boards ("not a supply problem but a demand problem") before weighing in on the appropriateness of relationships in the workplace, especially when they involve a CEO and a subordinate.
"Companies need to be very clear about the standards of professional behaviour that they expect [from CEOs]," she said. "And they also need to know that community expectations are changing.
"I would be seeking a please explain. I would expect also that there would be consequences. Probably both people should leave the organisation."
On the subject of Sheila McGregor's sudden departure from the SWM board the night before an internal investigation on the Worner affair was handed down, DSG said directors had a responsibility to shareholders to be transparent.
"The core question of what is the right disclosure when a board member leaves an organisation is an important one," she said. "And it's one where the expectations of investors are moving. What we are hearing is shareholders saying you need to set the dial to more rather than less transparency. The times they are a 'changing."
Can I have a hallelujah?
Asked whether she thought the Seven board acted properly in the affair, DSG diplomatically replied: "A board needs to get together and come to a consensus. I am sure that's what they did and they landed where they landed."
Do you think they landed in a good place? Moore persisted.
"I think they landed where they landed."
Because it's all in what's not said.
Meanwhile, across town, Tim Worner had become a Les Patterson punchline.
"Crashing" the book launch of The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak, the redoubtable cultural attache said he felt for "ol Tim Worner".
"We all put our hand on the wrong knee from time to time," Sir Les intoned to guffaws, before adding: "In my career I have always maintained a position of rectitude, and sometimes even erectitude, by frankly doing the opposite to what poor old Worny did. I believe in rooting everyone in the office, not just one. That was his mistake."
I reckon that will just about do us for the week.
We don't profess to be the sort of corporate crisis communications experts on which Seven is currently spending megabucks to try and contain the saga, but surely when yourCEO has become the butt of jokes, the game is up.
