Business
At home: Lord Bell
The PR guru on working with Thatcher and Murdoch and moving to the centre – geographically at least
Tim Bell has been moving to the centre all his life. For a man who was Lady Thatcher’s PR guru, this would be sensational news except that the movement has been geographic rather than political. “As my career progressed,” he says with a laugh, “I have worked my way from north London to the centre,” from a Norman Shaw house in Frognal Lane, Hampstead, to a Belgravia town house.
Thatcher lives round the corner, Yehudi Menuhin used to be the residents’ spokesman and a few doors away is a house that fooled an entire generation of television viewers into believing they were witnessing events from a police station in the East End of London. Now a private residence, then it was London’s most famous police station. “The Queen Mother,” explains Lord Bell, “used to give it the prize for being the prettiest police station every year for God knows how long. And Jack Warner stood outside it in Dixon of Dock Green, [a British TV series that ran from 1955 to 1976].”
Forget Olympics medals, think of the UK’s trade benefits
The Evening Standard
Modern nations come together at Olympics or World Cups, not merely to prove athletic prowess on the field of play.
The off-the-field activities of their businessmen can be more lucrative than those of Chelsea footballer John Terry, as they seek money-making opportunities.
These global sporting events have now replaced the Victorian great exhibitions as the places to network and promote a nation’s trade. No country is more confident that it has got its “Olympics means business” message right than Britain.
So, although British winter athletes returned from Vancouver holding up the bottom of the Winter Games medals table along with Estonia and Kazakhstan, away from the ski slopes and ice venues, British officials have been hailing the Games as a triumph.
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Bursting into the World Market
Securities & Investment Review
ICELAND has a population not much bigger than one of the smaller London boroughs — a little over 270 000 — and a flat, fea-tureless landscape that, because of its vol-canic nature, has so few trees that even Icelanders joke that a single Christmas tree constitutes a forest.
It was here, in the mid-70s, that the chess match of the century — Spassy v Fisher — took place. Then, in the mid-80s, it played host to the seminal meeting of the post-war world when Reagan met Gorbachev. But, while both these events went on to have global repercus-sions, Iceland returned to its historic role as a quiet backwater, difficult to get to and even more difficult to learn about.
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The covert world of American commerce
Director Magazine
THERE is no belief more powerful than the one that goes: America is a meritocracy which gives everyone a chance. Colin Powell, who might well become the first black president of the US, has made much of the fact that it was lucky for him his Jamaican parents migrated to the Bronx and not Brixton. In Brixton he might have become the driver of the number 37 bus, he has suggested. Birth in the Bronx has given him a better than even chance of reaching the White House.
It’s all part of the myth that the US is the most open society in the world. But if my recent experiences in the US are any guide, then British business is much more open than its US counterpart.
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WHO is the most difficult person to get hold of in Britain today?
Money Marketing
No, it is not Mrs Thatcher nor, for that matter, Salman Rushdie but, would you believe, David Walker, chairman of SIB.
Two months ago I approached the SIB press office requesting an interview for a magazine feature. I was told that, what with holiday and other commitments, the earliest he could squeeze me in was the end of February.
I got the magazine to postpone the feature, and waited for a confirmation from SIB. Now the press officer rings to say that Walker cannot see me until the second week of April.
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