So he never did become the media company CEO he deserved to be.
It's a bit late for that now but, according to the Sunday Times, Arculus is being lined up to take over as Emap chairman if a group of investors succeed in thwarting current chairman Alun Cathcart's plan to flog off the company piecemeal.
Could Arculus, maybe as executive chairman a la Michael Grade, revive the former stock market darling?
After Miller, who also had a less than glittering spell as EMAP chairman, Emap CEOs have been biting the dust with regularity.
Kevin Hand overpaid for an American publishing business and Tom Moloney was ousted because he failed to convince the City he had an "internet strategy".
He probably had as much of one as anybody else. When lads' mag FHM was producing most of his growth he could hardly dump the print version and stick it all online could he?
But Emap still has three good businesses -- consumer mags, business mags and exhibitions and broadcasting -- so it's hardly a basket case.
Will Sir David, as he now is, finally get the chance to run the show?
Depends how much Catchart's mixture of trade and private equity bidders stump up.
The Great Crash of 2007 -- are we worried?
On Friday memories turned to the 'Black Monday' crash of 1987 when the Dow Jones Index in New York fell by more than 500 points, wiping 23 per cent off its value.
This Friday the Dow fell 366 points, nasty enough but a drop of just 2.6%.
London and Europe fell in sympathy in late trading and there are fears there could be further to go when markets open today (Monday).
At times like these the market just seems to pick on one thing to worry about.
Last week in the US it was the sub-prime housing market/credit crunch (again) followed by a gloomy forecast from heavy equipment maker Caterpillar (which will obviously suffer from bad times in the housing market).
This was compounded by a surging oil price, although this has as much to do with the low level of the dollar as a supposed worldwide shortage.
Most people still pay dollars for oil so if the dollar sinks the price of oil goes up. Our hedge fund friends have noticed this and so have been buying oil futures like there's no tomorrow.
But a high oil price also means it becomes attractive to explore new oil fields, hitherto regarded as uneconomic.
So there's a bit of a silver lining.
The best antidote to crazy swings in the markets is a set of solid figures from big companies, and lots of these including Apple, Texas Instruments, American Express, Merck and Kimberly-Clark are due to report soon.
So don't leave for Mars just yet.
WPP takes a kicking
Advertising group WPP led the London FTSE 100 down on Friday as Sir Martin Sorrell's creation fell 3.6% with figures towards the low end of analysts’ expectations.
This seemed a bit harsh -- Sir Martin says the group is OK and he'll hit his target of a 15% operating margin in 2007.
He also said that, with a US Election, Euro 2008 and the Olympics on the way, next year will be boom time for communications.
He went on to say (I heard him on the Today programme) that 2009 might be rockier as there'll be no US Election…yes, you're there first.
Some investors might find it a touch worrying that such a huge comms group is so dependent on external events (which obviously can’t happen every year, much as Sir Martin might wish them to).
Sir Martin has never been afraid to give WPP a leg up from time to time by buying something big (JWT in the first place, then Ogilvy then Y&R and then Grey). The trouble is there ain't much on this scale left, apart from Aegis maybe.
He's done pretty well by acquiring a number of smallish digital operations but the real whoppers (overpriced as they probably are) are now being sought by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
Earlier this year WPP paid a hefty $649m for 24/7 Real Media. Microsoft stumped up $6bn for Razorfish parent aQuantive.
So some challenges ahead for Adland’s foremost knight.
Stephen Foster is a former news editor of 北京赛车pk10, editor of Marketing Week and London Evening Standard ad columnist. He is a partner in The Editorial Partnership and writes the blog www.editco.net and Politics of the Media for Brand Republic.