Duckers & Diving: Blowing the whistle

THIS week our peerless prose merchant turns whistleblower as he recounts a recent meeting with one of Birmingham’s best-known manufacturing chiefs.

I sadly have to blow the whistle on likeable Birmingham manufacturer Simon Topman.

He turned up at a recent meeting of the Birmingham Press Club with a Titanic-sized – and I use the term advisedly – business headache.

He tells me that at the height of the blockbuster film about the sinking tragedy, which starred Leonardo Di Somebodyorother and Kate Whatsherface, his firm Acme Whistles was selling around 15,000 of the things a week.

Now, despite it being the 100th anniversary of the disaster, sales are down to a mere 500.

The ups and downs of life, eh!

“Like, how am I going to feed the kids,” bemoans our hero.

But all is not lost – thank heaven for those ghastly bling merchants; the silver and diamond ostentatious types.

Thankfully they are buying encrusted whistles like a South African mine owner – and there’s more icing on the cake.

Topman – always a top man in my book – tells me: “There is this trend for giving best men at weddings an engraved whistle.

“And girls are these days keen to wear whistle pendants around their necks.”

A typical dirty trick from the female of the species – sound the alarm now when any bloke so much as makes a pass, I say.