Friday Funnies: Painting the party red

THIS week blogger John Duckers reports from deep inside the KPMG festive bash at Birmingham’s ICC.

ACCOUNTANCY giants KPMG have gone colour coordinated. Completely lost on me!

At the Christmas party in the ICC you were supposed to stay in a ‘zone’ – red, blue, green etc.

Personally, it took to the very end before I had worked out how, or even where, never mind why.

But then I had stood in the L-P section trying to get in….before it dawned that my name tag might actually be in the C-berk bit.

Luckily former senior partner Steve Hollis was ahead of me – had this article written before I had even worked it out.

If this summer you spot an ‘old girl’ with greying hair on Blackpool beach advertising palm readings….you can bet your bottom euro it is Hollis.
Much to my amazement Birmingham Chamber chief executive Jerry Blackett proves unusually controversial – surely some sort of first.

He informs the saint-like Trevor Foster that at a recent Help For Heroes ball he had been ‘dancing with a table’.

Foster? Never!

He squashes Blackett big time: “Actually it was a chair.”

We get chatting and I inform Foster that my lad Jonathan is the hooker at Moseley Oak rugby club and the wife is team manger.

“A good job it wasn’t the other way round,” he quips.

Naughty!

I find myself talking with ASAP PR colleague Andy Skinner and KPMG’s Steve Hickman about ‘winesweeping’. This turns out to be something akin to minesweeping, when you are at an event so long, bottles of wine are abandoned everywhere with small amounts left in, which you then Hoover up.

I plead guilty.

The intellectual conversation then reaches dizzy heights when it turns to Dyson hand driers. Skinner and Hickman think these are the greatest inventions since Galileo; Duckers says he is petrified the things will bite his arms off. Cue many scathing comments at Duckers’ expense.

Thank goodness Hollis wasn’t there!

Mind you, full marks to senior partner Mike Steventon, who was memorably brief in his welcome – something about it being incumbent on us to promote Birmingham, blah, blah, blah.

Hurrah-blah!

I bump into the city’s favourite lawyer Adrian Hindmarsh – thankfully no raffle for him to win. But he informs me it runs in the family and ‘mum’ recently snaffled a Fortnum & Mason hamper.

Mind you, there were apparently only three people left standing at the function when they drew the prize. Talking about ‘oldies’ Bob Warman is admitting to be 65.

But is having none of this easing-up-business despite now being part-time at Central News.

“I work eight days a week – just only three at Central.”

But then, a little later, spotting Hindmarsh and I talking to lawyer James Retallack, he barges in and declares: “Are these people bothering you, James? If so I shall have them removed immediately.”

The cheek of it!

But hang on….I bump into Lucy Hackett, fundraising supremo at charity St Basils who has clearly been stalking me since the Harvey Nicks bash the previous night.
She informs me that me, her, St Basils chum Anne Morton and marketing babe Suzie Branch have won a hamper.

And it is all going to St Basils. Not a drop of brandy or even a free trifle for Duckers.

Still given, in my assessment, we got 50% of the quiz answers correct and guessed the rest, this is a remarkable achievement.

Gosh, the competition must have been thick!

• For more questionable gossip, tittle tattle and trivia from the region’s business community see Duckers & Diving.