Friday, February 02, 2007

Pots of gold. . . .


Last night I went with friends to hear Duncan Bannatyne (of Dragons' Den fame) talk in Glasgow.
The event was hosted by Waterstones and the Glasgow Herald newspaper and was to publicise Bannatyne's book Anyone Can Do It (spookily similar title to the Coffee Republic founders' book Anyone Can Do it !)
The event was entertaining enough - Bannatyne is a good, if not particularly inspiring, speaker - but it was the audience that really made it for me.
The evening took the form a set piece interview (easy questions, cued up anecdotes) with someone from the Glasgow Herald newspaper and then it was questions from the floor. It was a lesson on why you should NEVER take questions from the floor in Glasgow. The first question was from a youth worker berating him from idolising wealth as a marker of success and it was downhill from there to the final (quickly terminated) insults about the quality of Bannatyne's plastic surgery.
The audience was full of desperate looking young men (the two I spoke to both had a "secret product" in development that they couldn't tell me about - presumably they would have had to kill me if it has been inadvertently revealed) and teachers/youth workers/ social workers torn between wanting to go home with some inspiration to pass on to their charges and the fact that they despise everything that Bannatyne seems to stand for.
Anyone can do it . . .but would they want to?
In the photo it is obviously Drymen Milk Bar that is home to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

6 comments:

Heather said...

I'm having difficulty passing comments on your blog for some reason - I write something and its gone into the ether!!

I thought this post was funny - he should have talked to the genteel folks in Rutland instead - he would have got an easier ride.

Heather

Jane said...

I think that blogger is very good at losing comments - often I comment on something and then it disappears - I also seem to have a lot of failed attempts at the word verification (and I'm not THAT bad a typer).
That is one of the reasons that I'm thinking of moving to typepad.

Bannatyne is a local boy made good - and I don't think that Scotland copes particularly well with that - though I must say his plastic surgery was a bit disconcerting as his face can't move.

Anonymous said...

I just lost my comment to you as well! Try again. Sounds like you had an entertaining evening, I always liked Duncan Bannatyne on the few occasions I did watch the Drangons Den. Don't know if I would actually like him in person, the face lift sounds amazing!
re. TYpepad v Blogger, can't really comment except to suggest that you actually try Typepad for yourself before making any decisions. They offer a free trial period.

Gigibird said...

I'm afraid that today how much someone earns does seem to be the marker of success rather than having a vocation, respecting members of society who lead good honest upright lives...
But I guess at least with artists and crafters no one can say we do it for the money!

Heather said...

I never said about the typepad/blogger debate - we use wordpress and have been very very happy with that if it helps?

But I need to have a look at verifications - I am being hounded by spam in the 'contact me' box - so I'm going to look at how I can foil the bots & crawlers

Heather

Nonnie said...

Sounds like an interesting evening. Maybe he should change the title of the book to 'anyone can have plastic surgery'!?