Short audio preview

Event Review

L. Vaughan Spencer is a self-proclaimed management guru. He has a mullet hairdo and goatee beard. He rolls the sleeves of his bright-orange suit up to the elbow. He calls himself the "P. Diddy of personal development" and the "Che Guevara of change". His favourite mantra is: "Don't be needy, be succeedy!" Thankfully, he's also fictional - the alter ego of comedian Neil Mullarkey.

You may know Mullarkey from his collaborations with Mike Myers in the Austin Powers movies, but his greatest claim to fame is that he founded London's Comedy Store Players. This is why the London Business Forum welcomed L. Vaughan Spencer to compère its 2008 charity event in aid of Help the Hospices. And what a compère he proved to be.

"I'm the bad boy of business," he screamed at the packed auditorium, while readying himself to introduce the night's four guest speakers. "I'm the iconoclast who moves too fast, for what I'm attempting is nothing less than a heist on the zeitgeist... I is your exultant consultant, I is your facilitator; like an elevator, I will take you to the top floor of your personal metaphor, get off your couch you slouch potat-er, I is the gangster motivator!"

The other speakers were bona fide businessmen. They had a tough act to follow. But they too managed to keep the laughter flowing. First: Barry Gibbons, the former chaiman and CEO of Burger King and, in his own words, "the only Man City fan ever to have his face on the cover of Fortune magazine."

The thrust of Gibbons' speech was that, in spite of globalisation, there are still ways to differentiate even the most commoditised business. Consider South West Airlines, a budget operator in the US, he pointed out. There, the stewardesses sing the safety announcements at the beginning of each flight: "There are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are 5 ways to leave this aircraft!" Now consider the usual - someone advising you to fasten your lifejacket with a double bow and giving you a whistle "so that when you're down there you can organise water polo." No contest.

Next up was Steve McDermott, the LBF's resident expert on public speaking, whose salutary advice was: "Make sure you understand your audience before you give a speech, and that you control how you're going to be introduced." He learned this lesson the hard way while waiting to speak to a room full of civil servants.

The low-ranking staff resented being told to make extra time in their hellish schedules for distance-learning, McDermott recalled. A senior member of staff on stage was heard to mutter the word "bastards" under his breath. Then, after a mutinous coffee break, another senior manager - one of only a handful of women in the room - threatened to give the "stupid, stupid men," a "piece of [her] mind", before pushing McDermott on stage.

Third on tonight's bill was Richard Reeves, the former director of the Work Foundation who tried Making Slough Happy for BBC2 in 2005. He wanted to warn us about "hurry sickness", the tendency to rush around and neglect our relationships, "which are ultimately where happiness lies". He also revealed that 50% of the "door-close" buttons in lifts were not connected to anything, but merely a placebo.

Finally, we were treated to Geoff Burch, a salesmanship expert who advised the audience to treat every difficult pitch like a "wild boar hunt" in which "you've lost an eye and some teeth and an ear's been ripped off, but this thing lies dead at your feet." Once you've achieved that, he said, "you don't want to go to Farmer Higgins's piggery and start beating the piglets to death, you want the customer that comes roaring from the shrubbery with the entrails of the last salesman on his tusks."