Sir Howard Davies
A Tyrant and a Playwright Came…
With quite modest antecedents I’d inclined in youth
To an adolescent’s yearnings for the Right and Truth;
But, making it to Oxford, learned a life’s better spent
More in wooing than in rueing the Establishment.
Fell in love with most things media, made a dead set at my Jag,
Got my Second politicking on the student rag.
With such mandatory trinkets I was set to shine
Among intellects a little less acute than mine,
But with ‘bureaucrat’ engraved upon the old C.V.
Was advised that where it’s really at is Industry –
Not the dogsbodies of do-ers or the ones who pay the bills,
But the Davos-hopping Raiders of the Corporate Tills..
Though little versed in business, I then holed in one
Peddling old McKinsey whimsy on the way it’s done;
Learned the comfortable insight that a Board’s elite
Needs to soil its hands with little but a balance- sheet.
Much exposure on the telly, lots of media-chit-and-chat
Apotheosed me from a ‘Bureau –‘ to a ‘ Eurocrat’.
Yet the bane of ex-McKinseys ,reaching boldly for their sky,
Was the mandatory porridge with the dear-old CBI.
After which, with no remission, I was on my way
To be finance-friendly founder of the FSA;
So that bonus-hungry bankers could securitise their credits
Without some Regulator fool to bite the hand that fed it..
Yet, just when safe in LSE’s calm Groves of Academe,
A Tyrant and A Playwright came, unravelling my dream.
The pesky David Hare and media moralists were leaping
To uncomfortable truths about some company I’d been keeping.
So, what between the Melt-Downs and the Surfeits of Gaddafis,
I’ll be sitting this one out until I’m sure whose the last laugh is.
( from ‘ Profiles of Our Business Greats’ )