BUSINESS DIARY; A few morsels from the great and not so good

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Oct 12, 2003

Exercise in BBC wit

IT was a scene that rivalled one of the most famous in cinematic history or so it seemed to the Diary at the time.

In the wee small hours of Tuesday morning amid the gilded surroundings of the Le Meridien Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane the gathered stalwarts of the Scottish business community celebrated the winning of a clutch of awards in the Entrepreneur of the Year competition.

Gathered there were accountants, bankers, past and current winners and even the odd journalist (how else could you describe them).

After various cracks from our hosts about the Scottish success on the night we began to sing Flower Of Scotland. With Scotland's first rugby World Cup game then a few days away along with the Euro football qualifier, we can only say it seemed a good idea at the time.

The English, not to be outdone, started their rugby anthem Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Unfortunately they could not cope with the Scots singing and were drowned out.

It did not quite have all the resonances of the famous scene in Casablanca when the regulars in Rick's Bar drown out the German anthem by lustily singing the Marseillaise. But it did come pretty close.

The other guests had been warned. Tom Hunter, the Scottish entrepreneur and a previous winner had warned when he read out one of the winning entries: "The Scots are coming."

Hopefully the rugby will provide another, similar record of Scottish triumph. The glittering evening also produced a memorable quip. It came from BBC journalist Jeremy Vine as master of ceremonies. Celebrating the can-do attitude of entrepreneurs he quipped: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym."

RING ME,

BRIAN Stagecoach's Brian Souter has been suffering from a lack of confidence.

When Nick Kuenssberg asked him to speak at a fundraising lunch for Glasgow's Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, he asked why. "We want the creme de la creme," he was reassured. He looked up creme in his dictionary and was dismayed to read the definition was "rich and thick".

But there was a serious point when he confessed the company had not always been as honest as possible with staff. The Diary was intrigued but the former bus driver was off like an express before we could press him.

ARNOLD'S

ON SONG Arnold Clark, the doyen of the Scottish motor trade was in sparkling form when he was presented with the Scottish Business Insider Corporate Elite Leader of the Year award last week.

With a disarming honesty he said he thought the award was too much given how much he enjoyed his work and the fact that he gets paid such an astonishing amount of money for doing it.

Clark is, in the verdict of one of the Insider readers who voted for him, "an antidote to retirement".

He is a sprightly 70. M embers of his staff 40 plus years his junior have a hard time keeping up with him .

JOHN Simpson, the BBC's World Affairs editor was in fine form in his leadership lecture at the Insider Corporate Elite function.

His tales of interviewing Colonel Muamar Gaddafi in a multicoloured tent, as the Libyan leader wore his straw fedora hat the wrong way and broke wind, were hilarious.

He made the point that Gaddafi's problem is that because he is such a frightening leader he does not have anyone around him to tell him that something he was doing or wearing looked stupid. We are sure that there are no CEOs or chairmen in Scotland who get anywhere near this style of leadership.