by Clarkson Wroe

Created on: April 22, 2008

IT'S NOT A LIE IT'S A BUSINESS EXPENSE!

I have to admit that I am not the easiest person to employ and that is why for many years now I have run my own businesses. I am not the best timekeeper in the world and am often described as not so much laid back as comatose. A friend once sent me a card paraphrasing Kipling, it said, "If you can keep your head whilst all around lose theirs, you probably don't understand how bad the situation is!" He could have had a point. The great corporate machine is not for me but one thing I do really miss with a passion is "the business expense account!"

Now being in sports marketing and also having an interest in corporate entertainment, leisure and travel I am sadly aware that companies expense budgets are not as they used to be in the good old days of the 1970's and early 1980's before Margaret Thatcher introduced pragmatism into the marketplace. In those halcyon times not only was I a Young Turk but I worked for men of vision, men who were not afraid to manipulate an expense sheet and squeeze a claim until it squeaked.

The first of these, Bill Wood, was a man to whom I owe a great deal. He was to mentor me in both business and life, I was a youngster from a mining village and he taught me about food and wine and how to be confident in any company. I was two years out of college and walked out on my job in book sales after a series of fallouts with a particularly nasty bully of a manager. Jobless, I spotted an ad for a Sales and Marketing Representative for a Containerised Shipping Company. I applied and as luck would have it was offered an interview at a hotel about three miles from where I lived. I spent the morning preparing for this important interview by watching England bat against Australia in the Test Match at Lords and then walked, because my company car went west with my resignation, to my appointment. With no knowledge of shipping whatsoever and just a couple of years work experience behind me my prospects were not great.

Bill was Marketing Director of the company and he interviewed me along with the MD a lovely gentle man in his sixties called Sandy Roberts. I felt that it went pretty well but I'm not sure that I would have been offered the post if Bill hadn't at the end asked, if by any chance I knew the latest score in the Test Match. An hour later having dissected John Edrich's century and the promising, frighteningly fast but erratic bowling of Australia's Jeff Thomson and England's prospects for their winter tour

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>