Inevitably, he's destined to go down in the annals of corporate history as the Crystal Methodist.

The preacher man to whom numeracy appears something of a stranger but who rose through the oddly arranged ranks of the Co-operative Group to become chairman of its banking arm.

The fellow who took up these reins on the back of an immensely complex and toxic merger, but was apparently content to allow the executive team to embark on another failed acquisition which brought the institution to its knees.

The chap who famously forgot his lines, or, more probably, never knew them, appearing before the Treasury Select Committee and was sadly unable to reveal the worth of his company.

And, notoriously, the guy, once the local figurehead of a substance abuse charity, caught on camera dealing himself some drugs. Any more of this nonsense, Paul Flowers, and you'll be running for mayor of Toronto.

Questions have quite properly been asked of the now defunct Financial Services Authority whose "rigorous interview" - their description - of Rev Flowers in 2009 failed to detect or be unduly concerned by his minimalist acquaintanceship with the industry.

Rev Flowers may have bloomed particularly inappropriately, but there is no shortage in British boardrooms of directors and chairs whose knowledge of the sector they're joining is on the slim side of sketchy.

We might recall the former chair of RBS, Sir Tom McKillop, defender-in-chief of the blessed Fred Goodwin, came from the world of pharmaceuticals. And by the time that duo belatedly took a powder the bank was all but bust.

And there is another factor in play here. The world of corporate boardrooms is still benighted by cronyism, by a very particular form of incest where old pals appoint each other to their respective fiefdoms.

This has two corrosive effects; a disinclination to rock boats steered by chums, and an alarming preponderance of people with the same mindset and world view. Think of the upper echelons of the current Coalition cabinet.

Round the boardroom table it means too many pinstriped men with pinstriped minds and an unhealthy focus on the executive remuneration column of the company accounts. This inevitably leads to what the yanks call "group-think".

As the author of the term, Irving Janis, puts it: "A group is especially vulnerable to group-think when its members are similar in background, are insulated from outside opinions and there are no clear rules for decision making."

The missing factor is diversity, of background and experience and gender. This week, whoop di whoop, the number of female chief executives of FTSE 100 companies leapt by one-third. Or, in round figures, by one. There are now four.

The more excitable apologists for this gender imbalance point to the rise in female members in boardrooms, up to a whopping 19%. A closer look at the figures tells us actually just 5% of these women hold executive directorships. The others are non-execs, sometimes known as window dressing.

When the UK Government announced a target of 25% by 2015, the next six months saw 46% of vacancies going to women as companies looked to embellish embarrassing statistics. The following six months that figure had slumped back to 26%.

But are we downhearted? You bet. Even though this week also saw the outgoing male chair of the Co-op group being replaced by Ursula Lidbetter, she quickly advised us that since the role was a non-executive one, she wouldn't be giving up the day job in Lincolnshire.

Meanwhile, Rev Flowers has also been ejected from the pulpit. Commenting on his fitness for a Methodist ministry he told that church's yearbook he was "known for an objective rigour and for asking the questions others might avoid". A description one certainly would be pushed to apply to the late and unlamented FSA whose own party trick appears to have been avoiding the questions most of us wanted them to ask.