Addison Lee drivers told to defy bus lane law (and to just say SMIDSY)

Yeah - no way would it be listed.
This sort of mad behaviour is limited to guys who actually own the company rather than CEOs under the relatively watchful eye of shareholders and an "independent" board.
O'Leary is the only one who can vaguely get away with it and only then because everyone knows it's just for free publicity.

Yup. And it's not a plan to stir up publicity ahead of an IPO, because shedding customers and tarnishing your brand does nothing good to shareholder confidence...

I'm not so sure, if you look at what happened when Griffin made a big issue over the M4 bus lane he and his company came out of it relatively well. He was of course helped in this matter by the fact that the vast majority of the public thought that scheme was a bad joke since its inception and it had high profile critics (Terry Wogan, Jeremy Clarkson etc.) who slagged it off at any opportunity. He had also come out of the recent "cash for dinners" thing well. His recent actions may not have been to get publicity before an IPO, I do however think that they are aimed at getting O'Leary style publicity but that it never crossed his mind that things would backfire on him as spectacularly as they have in the past week or so. I also think that for a company that is the size of AL that is not already publically traded there must be serious consideration to doing this, if only from the point of view of the owner's exit strategy.