Trading Gossip

Oct 17 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS a night when men (and no doubt a few women) revelled and quaffed and then quaffed some more – with some hilarious consequences.

North West Insider’s 42under42 dinner held in Manchester, now in its 10th year, seeks to celebrate the success of 42 of the region’s best business achievers, aged under 42.

It selects those “full of entrepreneurial spirit, energy and ideas”.

At last week’s event, it seems some of them were full of something more intoxicating as well.

It all got a bit excitable towards the end of the evening when several tables were given “corporate challenges” and then were asked to give a presentation of their ideas.

In particular, guests were asked to give serious thought to what needed to be done to encourage more business start-ups in Liverpool, and what to do to fill a giant hole next to the City of Manchester Stadium.

One group, led by Mike Pearls, boss of Manchester PR agency MC2, decided to list some of the negative perceptions about Liverpool – work-shy layabouts, thieving Scousers, etc, and these were articulated during the on-stage presentation. One wag suggested filling in the hole with Liverpool.

Pearls insists such sentiments were merely aired to be then countered with positive perceptions, but not everyone in the room was convinced, with one Liverpool businessman apparently walking out in disgust and another telling Trading Gossip: “A joke is a joke, but some of what was said was just overkill and not very funny.”

Added Pearls: “We did say we didn’t actually believe all the negative stuff about Liverpool, and also talked about the positives, too. It’s a shame if some people misunderstood, it was a bit of after-dinner entertainment.”

Littlewoods chief executive Mark Newton-Jones did manage to inject some genuine fun into the proceedings.

In a music-hall style performance, the boss of one of the city’s most iconic companies extolled Merseyside’s virtues using puns containing Beatles songs.