In his newly published memoirs, Right or Wrong, Lord Bell reflects on the unorthodox recruitment methods during the early days at the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, where he was one of the Mad Men bosses along with brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi.
Bell writes: “When we actually started recruiting, they dragged in 10 candidates at a time and left them in reception, all in a row, avoiding eye contact with each other and not knowing what to say.
"Charles walked out into the reception area pretending to be casual, and then came back in and said he liked the third from the left.
“We asked him what his reason was and he said it was because the interviewee was the tallest. We hired him — a chap called Bill Muirhead. And — whether Charles had a sixth sense or whether it was just luck — as it transpired, he turned out to be one of the best account men ever.”
Indeed. Whereas Bell founded public relations firm Bell Pottinger, Australia-born Muirhead stayed loyal to the Saatchis, joining them at their breakaway agency M&C Saatchi in the Nineties, and remains there to this day as an executive director.
No threat for Euro-lunching
A mole in euro-land chuckles about the EC’s flexitime working regulations. Your core hours are apparently 10am-12pm and 2.30pm-4.30pm. After that, it’s up to you. So there’s lots of time for those long, claret-infused lunches. It’s a hard life being a bureaucrat.
Keys is backing TipTV to win over punters
Eager readers may recall in August Spy mentioned TipTV, the new part-time sport and business TV channel launched by City stalwarts Nick “Moose” Batsford, a veteran trader, and David Bick, the former Manchester United PR man who advised Sheikh Mansour on his Manchester City acquisition.
News reaches us that the boys have got a new investor, former Sky Sports presenter Richard “smash it!” Keys and his wife Julia. The pair have taken a “strategic” stake in the channel, according to Batsford, while son Josh Keys has joined the start-up as a “content provider”.
Keys Snr says: “The business just strikes me as a good idea. I don’t know too many people who think the combination of finance and sport isn’t a really good entertaining mix presented the right way.
“Sky shouldn’t have worked, but it did, TV-am shouldn’t have worked, but it did. There’s no reason why this can’t work.”
Bowe can make the errant bankers quake
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Any banker under the age of 40 thinking that Colette Bowe might prove a soft touch as the new chair of the Banking Standards Review Council should think again.
The press release announcing her appointment reels out her past roles as chair of Ofcom and Electra, deputy chairman of Thames Water, director of Axa, London & Continental Railways, Morgan Stanley, Goldfish Bank and Yorkshire Building Society.
There’s even more. But the cv fails to mention how Bowe first rose to fame at the height of the Westland helicopter takeover controversy in Mrs Thatcher’s government.
As head of the Department of Trade and Industry press office it was Bowe, in 1986, who leaked the letter which ultimately led to the resignation of then Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine.
Bowe has never denied her role in the affair but has always refused to talk about it. She made ministers quake. What will she do to bankers?
