Innovation
Tuesday
Tuesday 3/12/2002The party season is in full swing! My geographical forehead seems to have calmed down, so I can contemplate a bit of socialising with equanimity.
Tuesday 3/12/2002
The party season is in full swing! My geographical forehead seems to have calmed down, so I can contemplate a bit of socialising with equanimity. Tonight is a typically congested calendar entry: there are two BT parties, one at the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street and one in the Tate Modern, and Samsung has taken over a nightclub in Leicester Square. A large ZDNet UK contingent descends on the first BT party and gets all Johnsonian: the evening is livened up by a magician who wanders around from gaggle to gaggle making things vanish. We ask him what he'd done with BT's profits and broadband strategy, but he merely smiles enigmatically and turns one of our number into a newt. Then decision time: Samsung or more BT at the Tate? As I live on the Piccadilly Line, Leicester Square makes sense, and I head a splinter group going that way. It's a Bond-themed do, with PR women doing their best Bond Girl impersonations, a really very acceptable martini to be had and the added amusement of numerous squiffy hacks trying to do Sean Connery impressions. Harmless fun. However, newshound Graeme Wearden decides to go for the Tate Modern and the BTopenworld party. Therein he discovers numbers of Arsenal footballers, fashionistas and other media-friendly demi-celebrities... and they discover him. All's going well until a marauding gang of East End dollybirds descend on him like a flock of feral sparrows and relieve him of his party bag. As this was mostly hair care and men's grooming products, and as he's always so impeccably turned out anyway, this wasn't a great loss, but from the faraway look in his eyes as he describes the event later you can tell he was expecting something a bit more raunchy than robbery at glottal-stop-point.
The party season is in full swing! My geographical forehead seems to have calmed down, so I can contemplate a bit of socialising with equanimity. Tonight is a typically congested calendar entry: there are two BT parties, one at the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street and one in the Tate Modern, and Samsung has taken over a nightclub in Leicester Square. A large ZDNet UK contingent descends on the first BT party and gets all Johnsonian: the evening is livened up by a magician who wanders around from gaggle to gaggle making things vanish. We ask him what he'd done with BT's profits and broadband strategy, but he merely smiles enigmatically and turns one of our number into a newt. Then decision time: Samsung or more BT at the Tate? As I live on the Piccadilly Line, Leicester Square makes sense, and I head a splinter group going that way. It's a Bond-themed do, with PR women doing their best Bond Girl impersonations, a really very acceptable martini to be had and the added amusement of numerous squiffy hacks trying to do Sean Connery impressions. Harmless fun. However, newshound Graeme Wearden decides to go for the Tate Modern and the BTopenworld party. Therein he discovers numbers of Arsenal footballers, fashionistas and other media-friendly demi-celebrities... and they discover him. All's going well until a marauding gang of East End dollybirds descend on him like a flock of feral sparrows and relieve him of his party bag. As this was mostly hair care and men's grooming products, and as he's always so impeccably turned out anyway, this wasn't a great loss, but from the faraway look in his eyes as he describes the event later you can tell he was expecting something a bit more raunchy than robbery at glottal-stop-point.