Ejected from the U.A.E.

I once had to make a presentation to the entire regional board of a big blue chip company. The presentation was in Windsor near London. An appropriate location considering the execution that awaited me.

As I had to cover 15 countries in 15 minutes I decided to show them some simple charts. Years before Boris Karasyoff had shown me how to summarise TV activity on a single page by plotting ratings against weeks. Previously I had written it out but in chart form it made it immediately obvious the position of the company against it's competitor.

I was therefore able to show quickly that against P&G my company was not competitive from Morocco, across North Africa, through Israel, past Turkey to Kazakhstan. It didn't matter if you were Muslim or Jewish, African or Central Asian; Procter had 52 weeks of TV at high weights & my client had rather less.

You would have thought that they would have been impressed with my brilliant summary of their incompetence. But for some reason they were upset. One Greek Australian man from Saudi Arabia was getting particularly irate as each country's performance was presented.

A couple of years later I was asked to help with a pitch in Dubai. The Greek Australian had left the Big Blue Chip and was now with a Saudi company. I mentioned to the local MD of our media company that I didn't think he liked me. I was wrong... he despised me.

I flew all the way from Berlin via Istanbul to Dubai. We went to their office. I didn't get past reception. Mr. Greek Australian saw me and asked to speak to our MD privately. He wanted me out of his office, out of our office & on the next plane out of Dubai.

My father always told me never to trust Short Fat Greek-Australians from Saudi Arabia.