Binder Hamlyn – Ian Louis Harris

It’s A Little Bit Funny – Three Evenings In Five Days, 11, 14 and 15 February 2019

For someone who is making a conscious effort to cut back on midweek evenings out, this was not a high-achieving week.

11 February 2019, BDO Binder Hamlyn Partners Reunion, Guildhall

It started with a gathering of former BDO Binder Hamlyn partners at the Guildhall. Michael Mainelli asked me to join him and Elisabeth in helping to host that event – the first regathering of those partners since the firm dissolved into Arthur Andersen and other firms in the mid 1990s.

Of course, I wasn’t a partner in that firm, but during my five-to-six years with the firm I did do most of my work for audit clients. I also did a couple of internal consultancy projects – such things were normally considered to be career-blight for consultants, but I was either considered to be sufficiently dispensable or savvy enough to survive such trials – I still haven’t worked out which.

Anyway, point is, I did know most of the characters who turned up at the Guildhall that evening, in the Members’ Dining Room, the very scene of the brawl I started, just a few weeks earlier, at the Z/Yen Christmas lunch.

Z/Yen Seasonal Lunch And Brawl, Guildhall, 14 December 2018

They are quite a centric bunch, the former Binder Hamlyn partners, in contrast with the quirkier group that descended on the National Liberal Club a few days later. Perhaps that explains why Michael didn’t trial his Gresham Society talk on humour in lectures. Instead, Michael made full use of his gavel and kept the formalities mercifully brief.

Actually it was a really pleasant gathering; just a shame there were none of the consultancy partners there who might have enjoyed the merry tale of my despair at my first assignment…

Reduced To Tears By My First Consultancy Assignment, 27 January 1989

…or that first musical jaunt to Oxford in 1989…

Music At Oxford At The Sheldonian Theatre & Bodleian Library, 7 July 1989

Anyway, I think the former partnership informally decided that it should regroup socially once every few years – certainly not leave it 20 to 25 years next time!

14 February 2019 – The Gresham Society Dinner – National Liberal Club

In fact we were on the way to the National Liberal Club when I discovered that Michael’s after dinner speech was to be on the subject of humour in Gresham lectures.

Excellent idea; it is always interesting when a professor chooses to speak on a subject about which he knows nothing…

…I said.

Michael laughed and then promptly added that joke to the start of his speech. It would be churlish to suggest that it got the best laugh of the whole speech, as there were lots of jokes in there…

…including, rather dangerously, I thought, one of my favourite intellectual jokes, the one about binary:

There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

I say, “dangerously”, because, of course, that is a joke that really only works properly on the printed page. As soon as you say “ten” or “one-zero” you have slightly killed the joke.

Had it been me, I’d have fallen back on my other favourite intellectual joke; the helium joke, which I think works much better orally than on the page, as long as it is delivered with good timing:

Helium walks into a bar.
The bartender says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve noble gasses here”.
Helium doesn’t react.

Anyway, Michael’s after dinner talk was merely the apex of a very jolly evening. As usual, Tim Connell tried (and failed) to get through all the AGM business in five minutes. This time Tim double-failed; firstly by over-running in the first place, secondly by forgetting to re-elect the committee during the AGM bit which meant he had to hijack the start of the after-dinner revelry with that aspect of procedure.

Unusually this year we were graced with Iain Sutherland’s presence and he brought Bobbie Scully with him as a guest, which was a very pleasant surprise. Coincidentally, I had that very morning been Ogblogging about a visit to the theatre some thirty years ago with Bobbie to see the impenetrable Peter Handke play (or should I say dramatic poem?), The Long Way Round.

The Long Way Round by Peter Handke, Cottesloe Theatre, 8 July 1989

At the mention of this coincidence, Bobbie almost started hyper-ventilating as she remembers that particular theatre visit as quite the worst experience she can ever recall having at the theatre. If you click through you can read more.

Mercifully, Bobbie doesn’t seem to think that staying on for the second half was all my doing – she seems to think we both decided to stay out of charity to the performers, as we saw so many people leaving during the interval. So my memory of her begging me to leave during the interval and me insisting on us both staying is one of those false memories.

But back to the Gresham Society event, which no-one left early, even at the thought of an after dinner speech by Michael. It was, as always, a very convivial event with such interesting and friendly people.

Barbera Woodthorpe Browne organised a really charming touch for the evening – which ended up being on Valentine’s night this year due to availability of the venue – by sourcing large quantities of Valentine’s roses and seasonal gift bags enabling all of us to take the roses home to our loved ones.

15 February 2019 – Kim & Micky At Sanzio

The following evening Janie and I had dinner with Kim and Micky at Sanzio.

Picture from our previous visit in July 2018

I realise, looking at the picture from our previous visit, that we not only sat at the same table again but we even sat in the same places again. Here is my account of that previous visit:

Caution: This Restaurant Might Contain Nuts, Dinner At Sanzio With Kim & Micky, 13 July 2018

This time I was not required to sign any disclaimers in the restaurant, but Kim was very determined to prove that she is “good at logic” by trying to demonstrate some logic puzzles on the table, using glasses, bottles and the like to try to make those “pattern-grid” type puzzles.

Janie and Micky were utterly baffled by it. I kinda got what Kim was on about (for once) but seemed to irk her by suggesting that such logic puzzles are not the be-all and end-all of rationality and indeed formal logic.

Meanwhile Kim’s dinner table logic puzzles started to look and sound like an old duffer demonstrating military maneuvers or cricket field placings by moving the cruet around the table. And the more Janie protested that she doesn’t/cannot engage with such puzzles at all, the more Kim sought to explain, while insisting that Janie can.

Meanwhile, I have a funny feeling that Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting alone at the next table, contemplating existential logic. After dinner, I heard the gentleman say to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”. The waitress acknowledged his order and Sartre returned to his ponderings. A minute or two later, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we don’t have any cream – is it OK without milk?”

Þe Chronique Of Primordyall Z/Yen: Þe Third Part: Windes Blast & Weder, Autumn 1994

Having planned to flee BDO Binder Hamlyn and its management consultancy when it was announced that Arthur Andersen would be taking it over…

Þe Chronique Of Primordyall Z/Yen: Þe First Part – Sumer Is Icomen In, Spring 1994

…and then having fled and started establishing Z/Yen…

Þe Chronique Of Primordyall Z/Yen: Þe Second Part: Mirie It Is While Sumer Ilast, Summer 1994

… there were times when I thought the business wouldn’t be ready to start trading on 1 October 1994. But of course we were able to open our sole door, to our sole room in Garrard House, 31-45 Gresham Street, on that prescribed day. No death in a ditch for me.

Click and look at the images for that address and you will see a grand City building, opposite Wax Chandler’s Hall, which at the time of writing has been home to Schroders plc for decades.

In the autumn of 1994, though, it was an old 1930’s building, in a state of some distress, which was about to be emptied for the purposes of a massive makeover for Schroders.

Nice address.

Mercifully, no pictures seem to survive on-line of the old Garrard House, nor of the single, pokey room that was, for about nine months, in 1994/1995, Z/Yen. Here and below is a link to a wonderful blog piece about the history of Gresham Street with some good photos which, again mercifully, miss out the 1930s to 1990s Garrard House:

Gresham Street And St. Lawrence Jewry

There were just five of us on the payroll that first autumn; Kate Carty, me, Stuart Otter, Steve Taylor and John Thompson. Michael Mainelli was with us, in spirit and informally, but technically Michael was unable to join the firm until February 1995.

Kate Carty got something akin to cabin fever in those early months, as so few of us went nigh nor by the place. Yet somehow Kate and Steve got it together during that early period of Z/Yen’s life, such that our tiny business of just six people; the other four of whom were attached, managed to yield an office romance and then marriage which, like Z/Yen, has endured to this day (as I write 25 years later).

Kate (standing) with Elisabeth and Michael

One abiding memory from that room is the day in early December when we needed to splurge on getting our first year’s Christmas cards out. We thought this to be a very important marketing campaign…

…in truth the Christmas cards was our only marketing campaign for the first year or so of our existence.

A rare occasion when several of us were in the room at the same time; me, Kate and John Thompson.

In the early days of a business, everyone needs to muck in for all tasks, including stuffing envelopes and labelling up Christmas cards…

…but John Thompson seemed a little reluctant for such menial tasks.

I said:

I must be the highest paid envelope-stuffer in the City right now.

John, a competitive fellow who was being paid considerably more than me at that time, immediately jumped up and exclaimed,

No, I am the highest paid envelope-stuffer in the City.

I was delighted to let JT win that debate.

Þe Chronique Of Primordyall Z/Yen: Þe Second Part: Mirie It Is While Sumer Ilast, Summer 1994

I left BDO at the beginning of August with a view to most of the others joining at the start of October 1994. Michael was not permitted to join until early 1995. So for seven or eight weeks, I was technically on my own, setting up Z/Yen.

In Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, there is a story about Golgafrinchans, a race of humanoid beings on another planet, who were the true ancestors of humanity. The Golgafrinchans divided their society into three distinct groups; thinkers, doers and middle-folk, the latter group of which were deemed useless and so were launched off into space, purportedly to be the advance party for a relocation of the entire society, but in reality to enable the thinkers and doers to stay put and thrive on their own planet.

Now I like to think of myself as part thinker, part doer, but there were times during that late summer when I wondered whether I has been launched as a Golgafrinchan-style advance party.

Not that I was entirely on my own. My diary shows an evening session with Michael on 9 August, which resulted in a massive “to do” list for establishing Z/Yen, “Z/Yen Notes”, available for inspection here.

In addition to the tasks on that list, I wrote an initial business plan, also available for inspection here. I also finished off several client assignments on an associate basis after leaving the old firm. My diary for those weeks looks ridiculous – it was a ludicrously busy time.

It was hard to get businesses started in those days. It was impossible to find premises without 12 months or more trading record, but how were we supposed to get a trading record without space. Thank you, Nick Pickering of Rochester Partnership for helping us with space for that early part of Z/Yen’s life.

It was a similar “Catch 22” with start-up business finance in those days. Michael, Elisabeth, Janie and I took Z/Yen’s initial business plan to the South of France late August – we had to pitch it to our prospective external investors at Eli Wallitt’s villa in Saint-Cézaire-sur-Siagne, near Grasse.

We all stayed in Nice at the Hotel Windsor. My financial records show that we ate one night at Le Farniente, which is still there 25 years later. We also ate at a place named Au Bistroquet which is harder to track down now.

I especially recall the convoy drive up to Saint-Cézaire; Michael and Janie had very different ideas on driving speeds on unfamiliar mountain roads in little hired cars from Avis; I expect it looked like a latter-day version of the car chase scenes in Monte Carlo or Bust!

OK, in truth these photos are of my parents’ visit to that same Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur part, in 1958.

That initial financing arrangement did not end at all well, but that debacle came later – part of Z/Yen’s Book of Exodus – whereas this promordyall chronique is Z/Yen’s book of Genesis.

I did still find time for writing some silly stuff. There was a leaving do for several people on 30 August at Corney and Barrow. In fact, I think, technically, that was my leaving do as well. I’d had an informal, smaller gathering of friends at the same venue on 12 August at my own expense, but I think the 30 August thing was laid on by the firm. I produced a handout for the evening, which I think went down well.

The Secret Diary Of Adrian Burn Aged 49 3/4, A Spoof Produced For A BDO Consulting Multiple Leaving Do, 30 August 1994

I do also recall around that time some farcical conversations with the Companies House people, who struggled to register our little group of companies because different departments, that didn’t speak with each other, dealt with holding companies and subsidiary companies. The holding companies got bounced because they didn’t have subsidiaries, while the subsidiaries got registered to (at the time) non-existent holding companies. Technically speaking, this might mean that Z/Yen has never has existed at all; an intriguing thought.

Mark Lewis was a Welsh gentleman at Companies House, not my old friend Mark Lewis, latterly a famous media lawyer.

Another typical, ludicrous example of my activities in a single week

At several points, I thought the business wouldn’t be ready to start trading on 1 October 1994, but of course we were able to open our doors (or I should say one door, for one room in Gresham Street) that day.

Þe Chronique Of Primordyall Z/Yen: Þe First Part – Sumer Is Icomen In, Spring 1994

At Binder Hamlyn (BDO Consulting), 20 Old Bailey

My earliest diary note of the events that actually led to Z/Yen are in the week of 28 March 1994, which has a 9:30 call with Michael Mainelli that day and the evening of 30 March booked out “MRM” (that’s Michael) for a Park Inn Chinese meal, at my place, organised at short notice.

It was on 28 March that the rumour broke in the press that Arthur Andersen was in the process of taking over our firm, BDO Binder Hamlyn. Our part of the firm at that time was known as BDO Consulting.

My memory records a couple of “two bottles of wine” evenings with Michael, but actually I don’t think 30 March was one of those. I think the first “two bottles” evening was a couple of weeks later, after a consultancy team meeting at which it became clear that the so-called “merger” was going ahead and that the consultancy was going with it.

I’m pretty sure that we ate and drank in a place along Craven Road, near to Michael’s place. Spanish, I think, but possibly Italian – I think now Il Gusto.

The date of the “two bottles of Rioja” evening during which the name Z/Yen emerged is lost in the mists of time, but I am guessing late spring and I specifically recall the name emerging towards the end of another Park Inn Chinese meal at my flat. By that time we had colleagues Stuart Otter, Steve Taylor and Kate Carty lined up to join the new venture, together with the elusive John Thompson, who had been a client of Michael’s. No-one was entirely comfortable with the name Z/Yen, but when we challenged everyone (including ourselves) to suggest something better, answer there came none.

So Z/Yen it was.

Music At Oxford At The Old Royal Naval College, 9 June 1992

I was reminded of this evening when John Random and I visited the Old Royal Naval College and toured the Painted Hall ceiling in January 2018 – click here or below for that story:

If It Ain’t Baroque…Don’t Fix It, A Day Out With John Random, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich,18 January 2018

I mentioned to John during that 2018 visit that I had attended (nay, even been part of the hosting group for) a concert in 1992, around the time, strangely, that John Random and I first met.

I did recall that I had seen Evelyn Glennie perform that evening and that it had been a BDO Binder Hamlyn event as part of my old firm’s sponsorship of Music at Oxford. But the rest I couldn’t recall and I felt a bit silly about that, because I knew that I would have kept the programme at least and that it was all lined up to be Ogblogged…eventually. I should have dug out the bumf before the 2018 visit.

Anyway, curiosity got the better of me a few days later and I dug out the programme. Indeed, not only the programme but, inside the programme, instructions from the BDO Binder Hamlyn marketing department telling me what to do.

Here’s the programme:

Below is a link to a pdf of the instruction pack for hosts. There is even a copy of the form you needed to fill in if you wanted to arrive in Greenwich by boat.

Instruction pack for hosts – including boat form – click here.

People who know me through Z/Yen and associate “me and boats” in the context of our many Lady Daphne boat trips over the years, might be surprised to realise that I chose not to arrive by boat…those who know me a bit better than that in the matter of boats will be far less surprised.

Those who want a laugh about what happened the last time I was “conned” into transferring by boat will enjoy the following piece – click here or below:

Nicaragua, Morgan’s Rock to Mukul, 16 February 2016

A common theme to all the elements of this story so far is Michael Mainelli, who was/is:

the BDO Binder Hamlyn partner who led on the Music at Oxford sponsorship/marketing events,
my business partner at Z/Yen who owned and led on the Lady Daphne boat trips thing,
someone who, coincidentally, visited Morgan’s Rock in Nicaragua with his family (though not Mukul, which didn’t exist back then) a few years before Janie and I went there.

Anyway, I got a chance to interview Michael about the Music at Oxford event yesterday (25 January 2018). His main regret was that he couldn’t recall who he took as his date that year to Music at Oxford. Our conversation then side-tracked onto the loony rule that Binder Hamlyn had (and many firms still have) prohibiting intra-firm romances. Michael was already going out with Elisabeth back then but it was a secret, closely guarded by several dozen of the several hundred Binder Hamlyn staff and partners. So Michael had to take a decoy date to events like this instead.

Once we got over that digression, Michael recalled that this particular event was rather a ground-breaking one. Certainly it was the first time that we had taken a Music at Oxford concert beyond Oxford. But Michael thinks it might have been the first (or certainly one of the first) commercially sponsored concerts to take place at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel.

Michael also recalls that Evelyn Glennie was very pleasant company over dinner after the concert.

Here is an interesting little vid about Evelyn Glennie:

Here is a little vid of the percussion and timpani cadenzas from the Panufnik Concertino that Glennie played that night in the chapel – but this is some other people playing. It is a bit noisy:

But the Old Royal Naval College Chapel is a Baroque building of great beauty, so you might want to imagine the sole baroque piece we heard that night, Bach’s Ricecare a 6 from A Musical Offering. Here is a sweet vid of the Croating Baroque Ensemble performing it:

But surely the last word should go to John Random. Because, strangely, that 1992 spring/summer was when John and I met – through NewsRevue. John was the first director to have my comedy material performed professionally – click here or below for one of the better examples from that season:

You Can’t Hurry Trusts, NewsRevue Lyric, 7 May 1992

On spotting that we also heard a piece by Antonín Dvořák in the Old Royal Naval College that summer’s night in 1992, I was also reminded of one of John Random’s lyrics from that same summer. Because that was the summer that Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. John wrote a superb lyric to the tune of Slow Hand by The Pointer Sisters, which included the wonderful couplet:

Not a compatriot of Dvořák,

I want a lover who’s a Slovak.

1992 was a seminal summer in so many ways.

A mere 25 years later…double-selfies hadn’t been invented in 1992

Music At Oxford At The Sheldonian Theatre & Bodleian Library, 7 July 1989

“Everyone drives on the pavement in Rio de Janeiro” – picture produced in collaboration with DALL-E

We headed up to Oxford late afternoon Friday for an unforgettable 24 hours or so, centred around a superb concert of Handel performed by The Sixteen Choir and Orchestra under Harry Christophers.

When I say “we”, I mean “me and my workmates. This was my first of several Music At Oxford experiences with BDO Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants (as it was called at that time). In fact, I think this concert was the first that Binders sponsored and that Music At Oxford thereafter became a bit of a Binders fixture for several years.

I was thrilled and impressed when I discovered that my firm was sponsoring this concert. I had discovered The Sixteen a couple of years earlier by hearing their recordings broadcast on Radio 3 and had found their sound mighty impressive.

Even now, writing in February 2019, nearly 30 years after the event, Janie and I still consider The Sixteen to be one of the very best early music choir/orchestras we have ever heard – indeed we have booked to see them again at The Wigmore Hall quite soon. It’s been a while – can hardly wait.

But back in 1989 I had not yet seen The Sixteen live and/but it transpired that pretty much nobody at work had heard of them at all, so I was designated to be the in-house expert to whom inquisitive clients attending the concert might be sent for more information…

…in true management consultancy style, my having heard the performers a couple of times on the radio became, shamelessly, “recent, relevant experience”, enabling me to advise the clients about all matters Sixteen, Handel and indeed Early Music generally. I should have charged fees.

I remember the Friday afternoon, especially the journey to Oxford, very clearly. I spent the day at the office. As I still hadn’t passed my driving test, William Casey, the managing partner of the consultancy, offered to take me with him from the office to Oxford. I suspect that part of his purpose was to suck what little I knew about the music and the performers from my brain, so he could say something vaguely meaningful to clients.

Of course, we ended up leaving Faringdon Within later than intended and of course the Friday afternoon traffic between London and Oxford in early July was pretty heavy.

I discovered that the seemingly unflappable William Casey was as flappable as the rest of us when under time pressure, as we really did need to get to the Randolph Hotel, get changed into our fancy-pants clobber and be at the Sheldonian Theatre in good time to meet and greet guests.

Once we got away from the main London traffic it seemed we still had plenty of time. William and I chatted about various things, including life aspirations (mostly his) and William’s prior experience living and working in Brazil.

But I don’t think William had accounted for the dreadful traffic into Oxford on a Friday. 1989 was pre-M40 beyond Oxford, of course, so a fair bit more local traffic needed to use the narrow roads around and through Oxford in those days. So the stress levels started to rise again once the A40 into Oxford became a traffic jam.

At one point, William cut off a rather jammed up corner by driving up onto the pavement and jumping the traffic queue at the turning. Probably spotting my disquiet at that manoeuvre (which had not come up in any of my driving lessons) William exclaimed…

…everyone drives on the pavement in Rio de Janeiro!…

…which is the most memorable single thing that William ever said to me.

Of course, it was all a bit of a rush once we got to Oxford. Of course, we weren’t really late – just a little later than intended – so we were able to do the meet and greet thing before the concert…

…which is just as well, because we really were the sponsors – look at this page from the festival brochure:

Within a few months, we had changed our name to BDO Consulting; the first of several subtle name changes in the five-and-a-half years I was at the firm.

The concert was lovely and the Sheldonian Theatre is a superb setting for baroque music.

First up, the small scale but very beautiful Nisi Dominus, a recording of which, by The Sixteen, recorded just a few months after our concert, is (at the time of writing) available for all to hear:

Next up was the Lord Is My Light – Chandos Anthem No 10. Currently a recording of this one by The Sixteen is also available for you to hear:

Then the interval, which we spent hoity-toitying with our client guests in the Bodleian Library:

The invite doesn’t use the term hoity-toitying but you can take my word for it, that’s what we did.

I cannot remember in detail who was there that evening. All of the consultancy partners and a great many of my immediate colleagues for sure. Possibly some of the accountancy partners too, although I have a feeling that this first sponsorship was very much a consultancy affair and that it was in future years that the sponsorship widened out to Binder Hamlyn more generally. Michael Mainelli might well remember and fill in some juicy details.

I don’t think I needed to attend to my own main clients that year – I don’t think they attended. But I had been involved to some small extent with several of the firms clients by then, so had a fair smattering of people I knew as well as the general entreaty to “walk the room”, be the designated in-house early music expert and pretend to look intelligent…or whatever.

The second half of the concert was the wonderful Handel Dixit Dominus. I cannot find The Sixteen recording on line, but there is a fine live performance under John Elliot Gardiner which you might enjoy enormously:

My log reminds me how I felt about the evening and what happened next:

Superb evening. Ended up back at the Randolph Hotel sing-songing with the clients etc.

I am trying to remember who the main ringleaders of the sing-songing were; my memory fixes on Jim Arnott, Dom Henry and Richard Sealey in particular, but I might be mixing up this event with another event or two. Again, Michael might remember these informal details more specifically than me. I’m pretty sure Michael also partook of the sing-songing.

I don’t think we were sing-songing Handel at all – I suspect our singing was more of the Hotel California/American Pie/Streets Of London variety.

I do remember that we went on singing and partying into the early hours of the morning.

I don’t remember how I got home – I think I took the train from Oxford to Paddington for the return journey.

For sure I was back in London for an evening of Theatre at the National – that’s another story for another Ogblog…

…as are the subsequent Binders/Music At Oxford sponsorship evenings. At the time of writing the only other one I have written up so far is the 1992 one which was, confusingly, in Greenwich, London:

Music At Oxford At The Old Royal Naval College, 9 June 1992

But for sure this first Binders/Music At Oxford event, in 1989, especially the thrill of seeing The Sixteen at the Sheldonian, was one of my most memorable and enjoyable work-related cultural experiences.

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