An enjoyable lunch

Yesterday I had lunch with an very old pal of mine, a heavy hitter in the ad world and a sports media personality who was a former footballer. I thought I would be reprising my trip in Nice but our conversation was more catholic. My ad friend, picking up on Alice Mansfield’s theme, is an enthusiastic Wagnerian but expressed some difficulty in enjoying the music of Wagner when, as a non-practising Jew, he was so offended by Hitler’s favourite composer. To the extent I spoke about France it was to set out my concerns that Macron could not deliver the structural reforms that France needs in terms of restrictive labour laws and over protection of vested interests. We agreed that over the last 40 years we have witnessed huge progress in Great Britain in terms of racial, gender and elimination of prejudice. My ad friend does mentoring in schools in deprived areas and he was impressed by how commercially lively these kids are in seeing the opportunities of the Internet world.

As I left I felt what a great instutition lunch is for the exchange of ideas. Nowadays the alcoholic lunch is frowned upon yet work is not just about sitting behind a desk and racking up the hours but the generation of ideas one of which may take a nano second. I have nothing against women- some of my best friends are – but I also wondered if ladies who lunch leave their micro world.