Chummy's jolly hockey sticks chumminess, the ongoing cake thing, language mix-ups, speaking German to the Swedes, the problems of climbing a rope ladder to a ship in a skirt.
The NY Times notes that US corporate governance experts believe the long history between News Corp and several of its independent directors "is a glaring example of how chumminess in the boardroom can allow and even contribute to mismanagement".
The deal seems to be driven less by market pressure than by backroom chumminess, doubtless spurred by the fact that both buyer and seller are from the same region of China's Fujian province.In this section Will the real Mario Monti please stand up?
Mr Sulzberger's excessive chumminess with some journalists contributed to two scandals that hurt the paper's reputation: the invented stories of Jayson Blair and the jailing (over her refusal to disclose sources in the Valerie Plame affair) of Judith Miller, a reporter who, the Times later said, it had protected too much.
India dislikes the chumminess, all the more furiously after spotting a Chinese navy submarine twice visiting Colombo.
But the union boss is up for re-election in June, and his members are increasingly angry about what they see as his chumminess with GM's leaders.No one wants GM to end up in Chapter 11, which, at the very least, would involve huge legal costs.
(A culture of chumminess, and of bribing policemen for information, says Mr Davies as well as the News of the World's knowledge of the personal secrets of several senior policemen may have had something to do with this).
But even supporters worry that chumminess and pragmatism may not be enough.
For impressionists such as Rory Bremner it epitomised Tony Blair's estuarial chumminess.
But it is Vietnam's claim to the Paracel Islands, occupied by China, that is most likely to lead to conflict, which is why America's chumminess with a traditional Chinese rival seemed so provocative.
Although Mr Mittal denied that there was any connection between the donation and the Sidex bid, the affair still dogs him.His chumminess with Kazakhstan's authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has raised eyebrows too.
