Four Decade, Four Films, Four Scenes

[SPOILER ALERT - IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THESE FILMS AND DON'T WANT TO SPOIL YOUR ENJOYMENT, STOP READING NOW]

I enjoy the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs and sometimes wonder what songs I would select for my desert island. I'm still working on my eight discs so while I figure those out, I have come up with another game to play.

To play this game you choose four scenes from four films over four decades. Explain what it is about each scene that grips you and perhaps says something about you as well as the scenes that you have chosen. These aren't supposed to be the "best ever" scenes or anything like that. They are simply the scenes that you have chosen. That in some sense define you.

Here are mine. What are yours?

1980's - Bladerunner  (1982)

I love sci-fi films and this is the one I love the most. It's not all big, shiny space rockets and doors that go "swish". It's a dark, gritty future full of personalities, pleasure, pain and intertwining stories.

The final monologue by replicant Roy Batty moves me every time I watch it. The moment for me is right after he utters the memorable line "like tears in rain". It's easy to miss so watch carefully. At that moment his eyes flicker towards Deckard and a brief, sad smile plays across his face. I love this scene because sometimes I think my entire life is captured in that brief, sad smile and all those moments, all the things I have done, the sights I have seen are "like tears in rain".

1990's - True Romance (1993)

I am a romantic at heart. True Romance is a soppy love story. Well, sort of. It has a beautiful theme tune and a happy ending. What more could you want? Okay, a few tough things happen along the way but we get to be "happy ever after" in the end. I like "happy ever after".

The scene I love is the confrontation between two of my favourite actors, Christopher Walken (Don Vincenzo) and Dennis Hopper (Clifford Worley) with the glowering, brooding, silent presence of James Gandolfini in the background. In some ways similar to my first scene, there is something about the verbal jousting between these two giants that absorbs me.

Vincenzo scares me. I have met people like him. He scares Worley (Hopper) too, to begin with. Vincenzo is in complete control. He controls himself and he controls everyone around him. He will get what he wants from this situation. But there is a point in the dialogue when Worley accepts his fate. We see it. He nods (to himself I think), his voice changes and he asks for a cigarette. The music starts up, gently in the background as he flicks open his lighter. Then he takes away all control from Vincenzo. He has no power but you can see Vincenzo's grip and awesome control weakening. His fate is inevitable but he provokes Don Vincenzo into doing something that he has been careful not to do "since 1994". The two men, understanding what has happened, laugh together and Vincenzo kisses Worley. Look at Worley's face a second after that kiss. Worley wins.

2000's - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Another genre that I love is Chinese films and in particular the grand, sweeping films exemplified by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This film took things to a new level and I remember being awestruck when I first watched this film over a decade ago.

My scene from this film is the love scene between Master Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien. In the midst of all the madness, violence and fighting these two old warriors admit their feelings for each other for the first time. The whole scene is peaceful and as Li Mu Bai says, it gives a sense of infinite peace. Infinite peace. That's all I ask for. Nothing more. John 14:27

2010's - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

I love spy films. I enjoy the type of spy film where hardly anything happens and hardly anyone speaks for two hours. Perhaps after 83 minutes a mysterious person half raises an eyebrow. Then everyone goes home. Bliss.

The daddy of all spy films is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I have watched the original BBC version many times over and I approached the  modern remake with much trepidation.

Imagine my joy when I discovered that it is a masterpiece in its own right that can sit happy alongside its predecessor. Its not right to say that one version is better than the other. They are members of the same family. Different generations. Father and son. Rightly proud of each other.

My scene from the modern film is the ending. It is one, long scene set to a beautiful French song, La Mer. It is the Seventies. So Seventies. That's my decade and one day I will go back there. At a Christmas party (yes, even spies have parties) you glimpse all the main characters and you understand so much about each of them in a fraction of a second. Esterhase in his flowery shirt and waistcoat preening like a peacock with a couple of ladies. Connie looking after "her boys". Control in sad, or is is splendid, isolation. Roy Bland, always suspicious and the beautiful Bill Haydon gliding shark-like in search of prey.

All our emotions are played out in that one, long, perfect scene. Desire. Unrequited love. Rejection. Betrayal. Revenge. Justice. Deep, deep sadness. Regrets. Memories. Doubt. Tender forgiveness. Respect. Acknowledgement. Triumph. New beginnings.

Whenever I watch this scene, and I do so regularly, I play out scenes in my head from my life that correspond to each of these emotions. It's a roller-coaster. It leaves me exhilarated and slightly queasy but eager to jump back on for another ride. What a scene!

From Jungle to Palace

Last week I mentioned to my father that I had been invited to lunch with the Queen at Westminster Palace on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee (along with a few other people, I should add!).

Mr Ilube Senior is a serious and thoughtful fellow and is very precise with his words. He would be very unlikely, for example, to casually say "Good morning to you" if in fact it was raining and windy. He would probably say "Rainy and windy morning to you" because that would be a far more precise description of the actual state of affairs.

So, I was quite interested to hear what he would have to say about this Royal invitation. He paused, considered the news and then said in a sombre voice as if addressing the hushed ranks of the UN General Assembly "my father grew up in a village (in West Africa) and never stepped inside the four walls of a classroom in his life. My son is dining with Royalty. From jungle to Palace in two generations. Wonderful".

It is rather wonderful actually. There are many strands of the story that come together to make up my journey but this is definitely one of them. And I feel that I am only halfway through my journey, so who knows where I will end up? Perhaps I have peaked and it's all downhill from here. If so, I am quite content with where I have got to. Perhaps there is more to come. I certainly have a few exciting plans and big ambitions up my sleeve and I feel as if I am just getting in to my stride now.

When I am talking to the young African students from across the continent who come to our African Gifted Foundation Academies I say to them that whatever their background, whatever their parents circumstances, if they use the incredible brainpower and drive that they have been blessed with they could be dining with royalty and presidents in years to come. I don't have anything like the natural intellectual ability of these kids and I have managed to struggle this far. Just imagine what they will achieve!

18 interviews and 20 press-ups with Mr Motivator

Last week I spent four very entertaining hours in a small radio studio with 1990's legendary fitness guru Mr Motivator. The occasion was the kick off of the next stage of Noddle's roll-out and we had just released a new story and had 18 interviews to do.

If you have never done radio interviews, it works like this. Your PR company sends out the press release to loads of radio stations around the UK. They are told that there will be a "radio day" and all the stations that want to do interviews are given a short timeslot during that day. You then book a radio studio for the time needed. In our case, because there was such wide interest in what we were doing we booked a half day and each station was given a ten minute slot, starting at about 8.30am.

Most of the interviews are "pre-recs" or pre-recordings that will be aired later that day or even later in the week. A handful will be live on air if the timeslot happens to suit the radio station's schedule. A couple of ours were live and it is odd to think of yourself talking live to about a million listeners, hoping you don't sound too ridiculous!

So, "Mot", wearing a colourful tracksuit and "Tom" (that's me) wearing a boring beige jacket turned up at the small radio studio off Totenham Court Road to prepare for the session. Someone told me they had assumed that guests were actually in the radio station when they were being interviewed, but sadly I had to disillusion her. Sometimes you will get called in to the station itself, but in a lot of cases the guests are sitting in another studio miles away and when you have back to back interviews its impossible to rush from station to station.

Then it starts.The technician twiddles dials and knobs and contacts the next radio station on the list. Mr Motivator and I would be chatting away (he's a very intellctual chap actually, as well as having buns of steel) and suddenly music and presenters voices appear in your headset and you are on air.

Mr Motivator is a seasoned professional at this game. Presenters were excited to be talking to him and he bantered away as if he had known them all his life. I struggled to get a word in edgeways. But I like to think we made a good duo, with me as "the boring one" - like Ant and Dec, Morcombe and Wise, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello (take your pick depending on your age).

The off-air segments were very funny. Several presenters asked him if he would record something special for them and he was happy to oblige. Could he say something motivational to be played at a hen night? Something to keep a presenter motivated in the last few miles of the London Marathon? I just hope these clips never get broadcast (at least not without an "Over 18s Only" warning!).

After a couple of hours of non-stop, back to back interviews we were told that we had a short break in our schedule. Thank goodness, I thought as I reached for a croissant, when Mr Motivator says "Great. Tom, let's do some press-ups". What?! I laugh nervously assuming he's joking when to my surprise he drops and starts press-upping away. Seconds later dressed in my smart casual, boring beige jacket I find myself on the floor of the radio studio doing a press-up too (yes, in my case it was just the one press-up, I'm afraid).

Mr Motivator may be 60 now but he is as fit and motivational as ever!

Help: I don't understand women

I've been thinking a lot about women recently and I have come to the conclusion that I need help.

I am trying to understand the different strategies and responses women use at work to deal with either overt or subtle sexism. I think I have a pretty good intuitive understanding of how to handle overt or subtle racism as I have wrestled with this on and off myself during my career (as I outlined here).

But I don't intuitively understand how women tackle these issues and I am finding it is actually quite difficult to get women to talk about how they handle the sort of mild sexism that sometimes is taken as the norm in the workplace. I am more interested in the tricky business of mild sexism rather than the outright sexism that just has to be confronted come what may.

It seems to me that there is a "one of the lads" approach. This is quite a popular model, I think. Give as good as you get. Laugh it off. Even initiate it to show how relaxed you are about a bit of banter.

Then there is the "I'm not a feminist" model. In this one, you don't really get involved in the sexist banter but nor do you challenge it. You don't allow yourself to hear it. You are there to do a job as a professional and you get on with it. You will be judged on your competence (you believe) and whether you are male or female is irrelevant (you believe). You are not interested in that feminist nonsense.

There is the "challenger" approach. You just won't accept it. Zero tolerance. Someone makes a mildly sexist comment and you turn to them, very professionally, and say "sorry, I don't feel that's appropriate is it?" Okay, you get a reputation for being uptight and people talk in terms of "walking on eggshells" around you (because they are incapable of being relaxed or amusing unless they are at liberty to make mildly sexist remarks, I assume) but at least you don't have to put up with silly boys with their silly comments every time a female secretary walks in to the room.

For example, here's a scenario. You are a manager and you go in to a meeting room with a group of managers. You are the only woman (as usual). Catering bring the tea in. Everyone sits down, shuffling papers. Some jovial wag calls over to you "hey Margaret, are you going to pour the tea?" Everyone laughs a bit and carries on shuffling papers ready to start the meeting.

If you are "one of the lads" you probably call back "oh, yeh right and why don't you come and paint the wall/fix this broken light/do some other "man" thing?" Everyone laughs again and relaxes. Good old Margaret. She's a good laugh. She can take a joke. Get on with the meeting.

If you are "not a feminist" then you smile faintly to signal that you are not too bothered and send over a very slight look as if to say, "Come on, let's get on with the meeting. There is a lot to cover. Shall we start?". It's no big deal, no tension. He doesn't feel told off but the conversation moves on.

If you are a "challenger" you say quite confidently "Come on, that's not really appropriate is it?". The room goes just a little bit cold. Laughter dies quickly. A few of the men think "good on you" but don't say it so you feel quite lonely at that point. The meeting starts and everything gets back to normal. Mildly sexist guy certainly doesn't make that comment again, but he and a few others also think "that Margaret can't take a joke. Bloody feminists. Political correctness gone mad".

So lots of different strategies. I'm sure there are others. There seems to be a bias towards the "one of the lads" strategy as far as I can tell, which I find interesting as a black person. For the most part black people at work we have moved on from the once popular "one of the lads" model and mildly racist comments are dying out (or at least I don't think they are thrown around casually in the presence of black colleagues without someone remarking on them). But women seem to accept the "one of the lads" approach and I don't really know why. I assume that if a group of women in an organisation decided that the so called constant drip drip of not-very-funny-mildly-sexist banter had to stop, it would take about a week for it to be wiped out completely. So why don't they do it?

Anyway, I am confused. I feel I need to learn. Women - educate me please! Men - probably best to listen and learn!

What are the odds of that?

At the recently concluded African Gifted Foundation Academy that took place in Kampala, Uganda a brilliant maths teacher from South Africa, Thomas Hagspihl, delivered a talk entitled "Beauty and Elegance in Mathematics".

I have to say it was probably one of the best maths lectures I have ever attended. It made me feel that perhaps I could have been a mathematician after all even though I was pretty average at maths (despite having the nickname "ADDIKO" at school for having scored 104% in an Additional Maths exam once. But that's another story).

What he seemed to be able to do was take quite challenging mathematical concepts and present them in a way that made you feel you grasped what was going on and that left you wanting to know more.

For example, for the first time I got a proper sense of the futility of playing the lottery. Apparently the chance of winning the (UK) lottery jackpot is 14 million to 1.  I hear those words but they didn't mean much to me. I couldn't get my mind around them.

In just a few minutes, Thomas put it in to language that I really understood. He made me realise just how big a million actually is.

Take a matchstick (he said). Let's say that it has a width of a millimeter. So, if we stood a million matchsticks next to each other in a long line, how far would they stretch?

Well as each match is a millimeter wide, a thousand matchsticks equals one meter (because there are a thousand millimeters in one meter. Got it? So far so good).

And a million equals a thousand thousand, right? (1,000 x 1,000 = 1,000,000). So a line of a million matchsticks standing next to each other would stretch out a thousand meters. Or to put it another way, a football pitch is (say) 100 meters, so a thousand meters equals ten football pitches in length.

Right, a million tiny matchsticks standing up, side by side would stretch for ten football pitches. Gosh a "million" really is huge!

But to win the lottery jackpot, the odds are 14 million to 1. So here is what you have to do to win the lottery jackpot. Line up 14 times 10 football pitches worth of matches i.e. 140 football pitches worth of matchsticks. Then put on a blindfold, walk up and down the 140 football pitches of matches and pick ONE. If the ONE that you have picked is the same ONE that the lottery comes up with then hey presto, you have WON THE JACKPOT!!!!

I love it. 

All in all a decent year

At the beginning of 2011 I set myself three big challenges. All were in train as I went in to 2011 but I knew I had to stretch myself a bit to achieve all three. In fact I was a bit nervous that I had overreached and I wondered if I would be able to pull it off.

Fortunately, with a lot of help from a lot of people I managed to tick off all three, and in the last few days of the year pick up a bonus point too. So, all in all it was a decent year.

First on my list was the African Gifted Foundation. This is the charity that I set up to seek out and educate exceptionally gifted African children, particularly in the arena of mathematics and computer science. It is a big ambition and one that I will be devoting a lot of time and money to over the next decade and more. After much planning  and preparation we finally ran our first ever African Gifted Academy in January 2011. We took 25 incredible young people from across Africa to a two week session held at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. We flew in tutors from Cass Business School, from Bletchley Park and from the Space Academy to teach the young people about financial markets, codes and ciphers and space science. We invited Harold Wanyama, the East African Chess Champion, to run a chess masterclass and play all 25 students in a simultaneous match (all of which he won - just!).

Second was the opening of Hammersmith Academy, the new secondary school that opened its doors in September 2011. I came up with the idea for Hammersmith Academy in 2005 and led its creation over six years and I am incredibly proud to be its chairman. Hammersmith Academy is the UK's first secondary school with creative and digital media and IT specialisms. It is an amazing school and houses TV and radio studios and technology to die for! We paraded in the Lord Mayors Show in 2011 and a couple of weeks ago I spoke to the 240 students at our end of term assembly after our first ever term. Magical.

Third was the launch of my new venture, Nodddle.  After taking a break in 2010 I got back in to the start up game towards the end of the year as part of Callcredit, the private equity backed credit reference agency. Starting from a blank sheet of paper, we decided to shake up the consumer credit report industry by announcing free-for-life access to your credit report. We researched consumer needs, looked at what the competition were up to, came up with a knock out proposition, created a new consumer brand, build the technology, gained support for the investment, ran a 6 month trial and finally in the week before Xmas launched Noddle in the market in partnership with the UK's largest price comparison site, Moneysupermarket.

Oh, and days before Xmas, Garlik the company that I founded back in 2005 was acquired by Experian. Sitting alone in a small, serviced office with two desks, a flipchart and some coloured pens I created a brand new type of company, with a brand new brand, using brand new technology, attracted and recruited an excellent team, raised the venture investment, rode the venture through its ups and downs over five year, taking it to the point where we were recognised as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. To have it sold to a great home is an excellent result and I hope the guys there will build it in to the international consumer business that it deserves to be.

So, in 2011 I launched an African charity, launched a secondary school, launched a new business and exited my last one. I am not always good at patting myself on the back, but I think on this occasion I am going to give myself  a "Good effort, lad".

Now bring on 2012 !

Lord Mayor's Show

On Saturday 12th November I had an excellent time marching proudly along at the front of the Hammersmith Academy float at the Lord Mayor's Show, with our sponsors the Mercers' Company and the Information Technologists' Company.

I say "float" because it was a float, in that it floated. An inspired idea by Master Mercer led to the creation of an inflatable balloon version of our school, held down by a number of sturdy Liverymen, selected for their natural ability to hold down inflatable floating schools. Along with thirty two students armed with rattles, plus teachers in gowns and Liverymen in robes, we made a very lively party.

We assembled early in Mercers' Hall and were treated to a sumptuous breakfast of sausages, bacon and egg washed down with lashings and lashings of tea, coffee and orange juice. Suitably fortified, we set off for our assembly point in to the snow blizzards and wild storms...okay I admit it, in to the rather pleasant, sunny November morning and prepare to wait around for an hour or so.

The Lord Mayor's Show has a history stretching back hundreds of years. For 785 years Lord Mayors have paraded from the City of London to Westminster to swear loyalty to the Crown, supported by the City's Livery companies. Today a wide range of floats join in, representing all aspects of City of London life. Tens of thousands of people line the route waving and cheering, politely of course as this is the Lord Mayor's Show after all. Someone described it to me as "[Notting Hill] Carnival for the middle class" although to be fair there were cheering onlookers from all walks of life.


Once we started parading, I realised that we were supposed to wave like royalty. I hadn't considered my waving strategy but quickly worked one out. Wave and smile, wave and smile. I discovered that you can make someone's day by selecting a random onlooker, looking in to their eyes and directing a wave and a huge smile STRAIGHT AT HER!

As we passed Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor himself raised his hat to greet us, I was accosted by Clare Balding of the BBC for a short interview about Hammersmith Academy. With me was an exceptional young lad, Frank. Before the interview, fearing that he might be a bit nervous I jokingly asked him "have you every been on TV before?". "Oh yes" he replied in a relaxed, almost off-hand manner, as if to say "of course I have, you funny old man, do you think you are the only person who appears on telly?"

In our 30 seconds of interview time, (at 50 mins 27 secs) I tried to get across how much I am fascinated by the combination of literally hundreds of years of City tradition with the most modern, exciting, high tech school in the country. Liverymen have been founding schools for over 500 years. We have founded this new one and it just blows my mind to know that in 500 years time our school, Hammersmith Academy will be back at the Lord Mayors Show celebrating its anniversary. Liverymen, selected for their natural ability, will probably be supporting a hovering hologram of the school using thought-projecting helmets, but the students will still have rattles and make lots of noise.

That's what I love about the City. When we say "a hundred years time" we mean a hundred years time. When we create schools, we build them to last. For us its not just a fad or the latest wheeze. It's our purpose. It's what we do.

It took about half an hour to get to our lunch stop. We parked our float and ran off, leaving the Liverymen tied to the balloon before there could be any suggestions of the rest of us taking our turn! Besides, I'm too light and would have blown away if there was a slight gust of wind. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Next to us was a military float. Their float didn't float. Because they had things that looked like tanks. They were probably armoured personel carriers but they looks like tanks to me.

Small boys eyed the tanks. Soldiers eyed the small boys. There was some uneasy shuffling on both sides. Then all of a sudden, excitable boys were being lifted on to tanks by proud soldiers whilst us adults looked on as if to say "errr, did someone allow for this in the health and safety manual and, errr, how do I get to climb on the tank too without looking like an idiot?"

We marched back, proud, tired, still waving, still looking people in the eye and finally came to the end of a marvellous day out. One young lad said to me "Are we nearly back?" Yes, I said, don't worry we've nearly finished. "Ohhh", he said "I don't want it to end."

Well, let me tell you. Economic crises will come and go. Government's will rise and fall. Wars will be fought. Men will land on Mars. History will sweep by. But the City of London will stand firm. The Lord Mayor's Show will parade. Hammersmith Academy will endure. Don't worry, lad. This is the City of London. It doesn't end.

The cleaning lady at Number 10

This morning I attended a round table discussion at No 10 Downing Street with a bunch of other mostly middle-aged-men-in-suits (us men-in-suits are like a tribe all of our own. Gang culture for the middle class, over 40’s).

I won’t bore you with our conversation but for those who haven’t visited No 10, the pantomime is always interesting.

Even if you have been to No 10 before, and I’ve been a couple of times on social occasions, it is quite fun to be invited. Over breakfast I did a lot of “Oh, is that the time? I must dash. Got to get to No 10 for a meeting”. “What are you doing this morning? School? Work? Me? Oh, nothing really. Just popping in to No 10 for a meeting.” My teenage son remained resolutely unimpressed. My wife almost hissed.

Getting in the front door involves navigating security. They seem to allocate very large policemen to the gates of No 10. I’m 6 foot (okay, okay, 5 foot, 11 and a half) but this chap towered over me. I wore my best City chalk stripe suit and proper tie “that looks a bit like an old school tie but isn’t actually an old school tie” tie so that he wouldn’t mistake me for a rioter and spray me with a water cannon. They are very polite, even when your name is spelt incorrectly on the list and they can’t find you. But eventually, after navigating the tough looking security lads in the hut, who try to appear all chatty and informal but you get the feel would relish the opportunity to see a bit of action, you get to walk towards the famous Big Black Door.

The Big Black Door always opens just as you get there. I had rather wanted to knock but I guess the doorman is peaking through the keyhole as you walk towards it (or perhaps a thousand hidden cameras, a drone or two and a satellite are peering down at you, watching every footstep). The uniformed doorman asks your name. I assumed he was being friendly as he didn’t take a note of it or check any lists, but it has just occurred to me that perhaps there are a bunch of faceless young men in suits listening to your answer ready to “take you down” if your name is not expected.

All phones are left in reception, so no live tweeting from the meeting itself. Except for the PM’s special advisor who laid an array of smartphones on the table in front of him, presumably to taunt those of us who were having blackberry withdrawal symptoms ten minutes in to the discussion.

There is a complex science to seating people at these meetings. Charming young chaps shimmy around with place cards, getting the positioning just right. Minister in the centre (but where is the centre?). A note taker here, an advisor there. A gaggle of Government types at one end, quietly wielding immense power. And us invited guests carefully placed around the table. I don’t know what the seating criteria are but I ended up being placed directly opposite the Minister. I tried to stretch my legs out under the table to play footsie but couldn’t quite reach.

There is a particular way of speaking at this type of meting. It was quite similar to when I was doing something for the Secretary General of one of the UN Agencies in Geneva. We are being Very Senior People. If you are being Very Senior People it is important to speeeaaakkkk veeeerrry slooooowly and in a rather deep voice. Speak slightly more quietly than you would normally so that people need to strain a bit to hear. You must look slightly bore. You can’t be excited to be there. You must endorse something. It doesn’t matter hugely what is it, but emphasise that you “ECHO WHAT THE MINISTER SAID AND FULLY ENDORSE ....the choice of biscuits”. Then as you are Very Senior People, you must calm things down by issuing a fatherly word of caution. Whist you encourage youthful enthusiasm you (smiling, but slightly tired eyes) just want us to think about the implications of spilling hot water whilst making tea. Remember also that Very Senior People never commit to anything. That is a skill honed over many years and many tricky meetings.

Lifestyle Partner: would you like your dinner now?

Very Senior People: I FULLY ENDORSE the concept of dinner and I applaud your decision to push down that path. Over the years I have been served with many dinners and I would just caution the risk of dropping food on your own lap. But I am certainly optimistic about the dinner situation moving forwards and its positive impact on the global economy.

Lifestyle Partner: oh for goodness sake, why don’t you go and boil your head

Possibly the highlight of the meeting involved the No10 cleaner. I suspect there is more than one No10 cleaner but it is nice to think that there may be just one lady who pops in “of a Wednesday morning” to dust and vacuum.
As the meeting progressed we heard a vacumming noise in the next room. We tried to ignore it and it would rise and fall as she moved around the room. Then the Minister spoke and was in full flow as the huge door was flung open and Mrs Moppet the cleaner burst in to the room waving a very noisy vacuum cleaner. Very Senior People are not used to this sort of thing. We wouldn’t accept it in our own home/office let alone at No10. The whole room went quiet for a fraction of a second. She looked horrified. We looked horrified. We looked at the Minister. He laughed. We all laughed as if it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to us in our whole life. Phew. Panic over.

The meeting ends. You shuffle around waiting to be led out (don’t go wandering off – faceless young men waiting round corners will probably “take you down”). Don’t forget your phone at the front door. Stride out of the gate, hoping that tourist take photos of you thinking that you are Somebody.

Then, pop, you are outside the No 10 bubble and back in the real world. From Very Senior People to civilian in the blink of an eye. You fish out your oyster card and jump on the tube, watching people watching you and wondering whether they are thinking “he looks like he’s just been to a meeting at No 10”. Sorry to burst your bubble. They aren’t!

On Being Mixed Race and Quantum Physics

The BBC is currently showing a major series on Mixed Race Britain, fronted by George Alagiah.

I have a particular interested in this give that I am "mixed race". I am also a physicist (or at least I read physics at University) (by which I mean I occasionally turned up to lectures that had the word "physics" in the title - much to the surprise of the lecturers). As a mixed race physicist, I naturally find myself asking what being mixed race has in common with quantum physics.

The conclusion that I come to is that the aspect of quantum physics that best helps to explain the experience of being mixed race is wave/particle duality. It's obvious when you think about it.

To provide a one line explanation of wave/particle duality (that will be immediately debunked by anyone reading this who has any knowledge of quantum physics, and such clever people I am sure will provide a much clearly and correct explanation rather than just saying "that's not right")...the principle states that matter (stuff)  and light-waves behave like both waves and particles, depending on whether they are being watched. Or to put it another way, look at the behaviour of something like an electron. Does it behave like a particle? YES. Does it behave like a wave? YES. What? Did you just answer yes to both questions? YES. That's confusing. YES. Does it depend on how it is being observed? YES. Do you answer all questions in capital letters? YES.

As I mentioned, I am mixed race. White mother, black father. Mixed Tom.

Growing up in the UK (mostly) in the 60's and 70's was interesting. In those days, we knew how to "do" racism properly. Who doesn't remember having 20 kids standing around you in a circle chanting that inspiring song

"Hey Tom
Wogs the matter?
Feeling a bit Browned off?
Didn't have your Coon-flakes?
Nigger mind
Go Black to bed
You'll feel all White in the morning"

So, as I entered my teens, I was very clear that being "mixed race" in London meant being black. I began to shape my confused teenage identity in this context.

Then, when I was in my mid-teens, my Dad took me to live in Nigeria, West Africa and I discovered something rather confusing to a sensitive teenager wrestling with issues of identity. I changed colour. Who doesn't remember being followed up the road by groups of small, smiling children chanting

"Oyibo pepe
If-e-eat-e-pepe
You go yellow more more"

(rough transation: White man, pepper. If you eat pepper, you will turn that funny yellow colour that white people become in the sun)

Followed by shrieks of laughter as the whiteman in question (me in this case, in case you have got confused) turned around and chased them away. I lived as an Oyibo for about eight years before returning to the UK and switching back to being black again.

Even today, when I travel to Uganda, in East Africa, for my African Gifted Foundation, I am generally referred to as a Muzungu  i.e. white man in Swahili. My Ugandan sister is known in her village as the woman with the muzungu brother.

Tom, are you black? YES. Okay, are you white? YES. What? Did you just answer yes to both questions? YES. That's confusing. YES. Does it depend on how you are being observed? YES. Do you answer all questions in capital letters? YES.

Wave/particle duality explains being mixed race perfectly. It's really very clear. I don't know why George Alagiah needs a whole BBC series to explain it. Understand quantum physics and wave/particle duality and you will understand me completely. It's that simple.

First day of school

Six years ago I decided to create a new school, designed for the 21st Century.

A school that delivers an outstanding education for everyone, that specialises in creative and digital media and information technology and delights in using the best technology in the world to inspire young people to create their own futures and to succeed.

An early and very special conversation with Michael Marchant in a coffee shop in North London turned the idea from a dream to reality.

I teamed up with some great people and sponsors, the Mercers and the Information Technologists Company. I travelled around the world learning from some of the most innovative schools out there, from High Tech High in California, to Kunskapsskolan in Sweden and Thomas Telford School in the UK.

We found an amazingly supportive local authority, Hammersmith and Fulham, that welcomed us with open arms and found a site for us to build the school. We teamed up with Barnsley Hewett and Mallinson, one of the best educational architects in the UK, Wates Construction, an outstanding building firm and a world class group of educational and building advisers. We formed a close relationship with the incredible St Paul's Girls School, one of the best schools in the UK.



We worked closely with the Department of Education, enjoying several Ministers and officials but with a couple of individuals who shared our vision and showed exceptional commitment to helping us create something very special.

We assembled a hand-picked team of teachers with a level of enthusiasm and energy that I have rarely seen, led by a headteacher who emerged from a gruelling selection process that started with nearly 100 candidates.

When we went out to the local community inviting parents to send their young children to a school that didn't exist yet the response was overwhelming. Over 650 applications for our 120 places.

And on 8th September, 2011, six years later, I stood and watched the first ever group of students, resplendent in their Hammersmith Academy uniforms file in to our school, their school, shaking hands one by one with the Headteacher, as a group of waving mothers and one very proud founder and Chairman shed a few tears.

Plan B

Do you have a Plan B? I'm not talking Plan B. I mean Plan B.

There is a view that if you have a plan B, it implies that you are not really committed to Plan A. I don't subscribe to this view. I always have a Plan B and usually Plan C, D and E too.

I think this is particularly important if you are a start up guy. If you are running a large corporate merrily executing your plan A then you can pretty much see the warning signs well in advance. You have months to gradually adjust your course, lobby your colleagues, change your messages so by the time you get to the crunch point your plan B merges seamlessly with your plan A. In fact it looks like plan B was plan A all along.

But if you are a start up guy, major shifts happen literally overnight. A key supplier that accounts for 60% of your business pulls the plug. Your VC backer tells you they are fully committed one day and sells their stake in you the next. Your critical tech guy is poached by someone who will pay her in actual real money.

If you don't have a plan B in your pocket and you are caught flat footed it can be Game Over. So, you execute plan A flat out. But the very second something goes wrong and you have to shift your strategy, you do it. You don't go in to a lengthy strategic review. You reach in to your pocket, pull out plan B and start executing that instead.

I am quite comfortable with doing this. I think it comes from my "tai chi" mindset that I apply intuitively to most things I do. Yin and Yang. Always looking for balance. Always ready to shift weight from one leg to the other to make sure I am properly balanced before I strike.

How good was your start in life?

Many years ago when I was a lazy good-for-nothing teenager whose top priority was seeking out the next bottle of beer and the odd cheeky cigarette, my father, in a fit of annoyance or possibly just stating an indisputable fact, said "if I had your start in life the sky would have been the limit".

It is a comment that has stuck with me over the years and may have made me feel guilty about wasting the start in life that I had been given (hah - his cunning plan worked!). It was a fair comment to be honest, and when I consider the start in life he had I have to admit that I don't think I would have achieved a tenth of what he did. On the other hand, I think I've done okay so far given the cards I was dealt and where I decided to play them.

Thirty years later, I find myself considering the start in life that my own children have had and how it compares to other young people today from more and less priviliged backgrounds and to my generation. Naturally, being a scientist by training I immediately had the desire to capture my thoughts in a formula, so that I could assign everyone a meaningless score and rank us all on a rather silly index.

Thus was born the Start In Life Index, whereby everyone has their own SILI Score that shows clearly where you are starting out from and how far ahead or behind the pace you are verses your peers.

The function underpinning my SILI Score is straightforward enough. It goes like this

SILI Score = f{IG, IC, NP1, NP2, EU, ES, CC1, CC2, PA}

The SILI score ranges from zero to 100. It is UK specific, geared towards young people just embarking on their careers post-education and it has all the validity of any other index that you might find in the average lifestyle magazine measuring your "snoggability" or your suitability as a cat owner.

If you score upwards of 90 then you have no possible excuse for not becoming a multi-millionaire banker, top City lawyer, head of the United Nations or a senior Government Minister. Achieve anything less and you have frittered away your amazing start in life. If you score 30 or less, then you are doing an incredible job just fighting your way past the closed, massed middle-class ranks who will, as a matter of course, be occupying all the middle ranking jobs.

So, let's get down to businesss.

The SILI Score is divided in to five categories

Inherent Features - things about you that you can't change. So deal with it.

Network - they say who you know matters. Well guess what, they are right!

Education - or as someone once said "education, education, education"

Cultural Capital - read a good book recently? Good. But don't forget to turn on the radio

Personal Attributes - Got that glint in your eye and fire in your belly? Hmmm...have you considered seeing a specialist?

Simply go through each category below, answering the question and allotting the appropriate number of points and hey presto, your SILI Score will emerge. For what it's worth mine was a modest 38 out of a possible 100.

Inherent Features

Gender - male 10 points

Gender - female 6 points

Colour - white 10 points

Colour - brown/other 6 points

Colour - black 2 points

Network/Who you know

Parents - have lots of millionaire/well connected mates 10 points

Parents - have a few millionaire/well connected mates 4 points

Personal - 20+ of your friends are in/starting professional jobs 6 points

Personal - 5+ of your close friends have millionaire/well connected parents 4 points

Education

University - Oxbridge 10 points

University - Other Russell Group 4 points

University - any UK 2 points

Secondary - Eton 10 points

Secondary - Other top public school 6 points

Secondary - Independent/good grammar 4 points

Cultural Capital

Sports - skiing 4 points

Sports - rugby 2 points

Sports - cricket 2 points

Sports - golf 2 points

Social - galleries & museums 4 points

Social - classical music 2 points

Social - regular foreign holidays 2 points

Social - familiarity with Radio 4 2 points

Personal Attributes

Strong communication in Queens English 4 points

Persistence 4 points

Ambition 4 points

Speaks one of French, German, Spanish, Mandarin 4 points

Can walk in, look anyone in the eye and shake hands confidently 4 points

As you will see by skimming through the choice of proxies and scores, this whole index says more about how I think British society works than anything else. It says interesting (I think) and probably controversial things about my beliefs such as

• in the UK, your gender and colour are still strong factors in the early stages of your career and its not as simple as being white or black. I'm afraid it is a bit easier being mixed in Briton today than being black (I wonder if this is controversial or obvious? I guess I am about to find out!)
• your parents network of contacts carries as much weight as your own
• Oxbridge still stands out and grades are pretty irrelevant. A second class degree from Oxbridge in any subject easily trumps a first from any other University, except in very specific disciplines
• At secondary school level Eton is way above the rest, whether they like it or not, but once you get beyond a handful of other schools (Westminster, both St Pauls', Harrow perhaps) no-one else really counts
• your kid can play all the football they like. It doesn't count. Rugby, skiing, cricket is where you build lifelong friendships that will matter ten years later. If you play golf, it's because Father does and you're playing at his club, so you're sorted, mate.
• you can go and visit museums and so on, but if you don't have Radio 4, The Archers and The Shipping Forecast wafting around your house in the background, the cultural capital that matters isn't going to sink in to your bones
• it's not enough to be a confident talker. You are going to have to work on your accent. The more you sound "Home Counties middle class" the better set you will be

So, there you have it. The SILI Score is a foolproof way of measuring how good your or anyone else's start in life is. It's not silly at all. Oh no, not at all. Not at all. And if only I'd started out with a score in the high 80's I might have made something of myself.

Are jeans smart casual?

Here's a question for you. Do black denim trousers count as smart casual?

I think they do. Some of my colleagues think they don't.

Today I am wearing proper black shoes, black socks, black underwear, a light blue button up shirt with cufflinks, no tie, a beige jacket and black DENIM trousers. I think I look smart and casual. I feel smart and casual. Therefore I AM smart and casual.

But apparently I am wearing jeans. Therefore I am not dressed for real work. Never mind that I am negotiating multimillion pound deals, structuring complex projects, trying to hire brilliant people. I can't be serious because I'm wearing jeans.

I heard a phrase recently "casual dress, casual attitude". It was delivered as if it was fact, and was received with approving nods. I listened with disbelief. Some of the laziest, most political, work-shy, hang-your-suit-jacket-on-the-back-of-your-chair-so-it-looks-like-you-are-still-at-work people I know have been hard core suit and tie merchants. No smart casual for them. Strictly proper business attire. Some of the most creative, driven, passionate, innovative, won't go home, work through the night people I know have been the scruffiest people you'll meet.

I fall somewhere in between. I am a smart casual guy. I will force myself in to a suit and tie if I have to, for a Board meeting for example or for a client meeting if I know that its a strictly suit wearing culture. But that's about it. Around any office I work in I'm smart casual at best.

But what is smart casual? Well, here's a pretty good definition. Yep, that'll do it for me. And in the definition I choose, black denim trousers count as smart casual. So, I'll keep wearing them until one of my courageous colleagues decides that they have nothing better to do than to try to educate me in how to dress in a way that stops me from having such a casual attitude. Then I'll switch to wearing a dress instead.

Casual dress, casual attitude, indeed!