BEWARE FAT LADIES AND ORANGE JUICE

I’ve been reading Iain Martin’s book called “Making things happen” which is about the collapse of the RBS Banking Group. It’s a bleak read because it interprets what happened with step by step superciliousness.

I’m sure Iain is a very nice man. I think he’s a clever one too. But his huge antipathy towards Fred Goodwin makes the book bloodless. Surely Goodwin was just more interesting and complex than this. In contrast read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs to see how a bully can be described.

“It aint over till the fat lady sings” was a line originated by Ralph Carpenter of the Dallas Morning News in 1976. Carpenter (possibly a Wagner lover thinking of Brunhilde) was writing about an American Football match.

In his book Martin has an elephant in the room in every chapter whom no one seems to notice. It’s that fat lady clearing her throat and opening her sheaf of music. And yikes, she’s about to sing.  I’m a bit surprised that the cast of bankers, regulators and politicians hadn’t been deafened by the sound of preparatory humming she was making.

But in most situations we face in business we seldom encounter such perfect storms that the banks faced in 2008. We just face a demoralising prospect of decline, desperation and demise. Yet the solution is to get in there before the fat lady puts on her glitzy dress and mount a planned and sustained sales drive. Cost cutting alone never does enough. You have to do something systematic about the weakening top line. Fat ladies can’t sing when you’re hitting your sales budget.

And talking a bit more about fat ladies there’s a recent novel piece of demonization. Sugar. In the 1960s Professor John Yudkin wrote a book called “Pure, white and deadly” which put the root cause of fat ladies down to their eating too much sugar. He lost that argument and fat instead became the enemy. But the devil sugar is now back under the microscope.

And I hear that fruit is bad for you, it’s full of sugar - crammed with the wretched stuff, and fruit juice is worse than Capstan Full Strength. As for five a day, forget it.  And chocolate? The “c” word is no longer crack cocaine – it’s Cadbury.

What I love most about human beings is our ability to change our minds and turn heroes into zeros and vice versa. If I were Fred Goodwin I’d launch a confectionery brand – what’s to lose?

Most of all I love our ability to re-group, prove our resilience and face down fat ladies with songs in their hearts and tell them that they will not be required, thank you.