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Page 13
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Letters for ladies
Take a stroll with us through the little side roads of haulage, the diversions and detours, the quirky, the quixotic and the downright strange...
If you're the head of external affairs for one of our fine upstanding trade associations then you should probably look away nowit only gets worse from here on in.
For the associations and their communications staff, annual dinners should be a time to relax, enjoy the company and luxuriate in fine food and wine. In fact, as long as everything goes swimmingly a press officer can act like a particularly well-fed cat, curled up by the fireside and emitting a contented purr. However for Geoff Dossetter, the FTA's long-suffering communications apparatchik, this year's dinner entailed enduring a short session of tail-pulling.
It was, we think, that sort of evening.
The reason for Mr Dossetter's discomfort? Table settings. To be more precise, the absence of a few crucial letters following guests' names. You see, on the FTA's seating plans any male guest lucky enough to have been honoured got to see their full set of letters on the layout OBEs, MBEs, Lordships, Dukedoms, and memberships of the Girls Aloud fan club were all there to see. That is, unless you were a woman.
There were three 'ladies with awards' on the guest list that night and they were less than pleased by the oversight. Cue the fearsome spectacle of a highly-motivated Nikki King and Gill Sheddick neither of them known as shrinking violets buttonholing the unfortunate press officer and forcing him to eat a double helping of humble pie topped with a thick, indigestible dollop of shame.
While we're in the mood for spreading cheer around, we'd like to say a quick hello to our friends at Canute Haulage and Currie European. The former for telling us in no uncertain terms that we weren't allowed to publish its results a matter of public record in CM. And the latter needs a big, warm dose of love following a sequence of grumpy phone calls where a PA demanded to know where we had obtained the directors' mobile phone numbers as they were "confidential". That'd be from their business cards then. Which they gave us. But shhh, it's a secret.