The Buerk is back

Grocer, Oct 19, 2002

The BBC's Michael Buerk carried on where he left off last year as chairman of the IGD annual conference with a series of barbed comments about the industry's "bigwigs".

Introducing City analysts David McCarthy and Andy Smith, he asked whether an analyst wasn't "a guy who knows 129 ways to make love but doesn't know any women."

Introducing Asda deputy chief operating officer Richard Baker he said he had not realised how competitive grocery was until he saw his grazed knuckles. Baker denied it was part of Asda's supplier strategy, but an injury from a veterans hockey match.

Happy to bite the hand that feeds him, Buerk apologised at the end of each session as he was required to urge the audience to visit the stand of the conference's main sponsor, noting: "You don't have to do this working for the BBC."