Making sense of a slightly mad world

bartlett mitchell’s annual networking event Making Sense of a Slightly Mad World took place at Saatchi and Saatchi’s amazing new offices, with fabulous food from our talented chefs including our Chef of the Year Finalists, more on that later!

Guests arrived, to the wonderful open mezzanine area to be greeted by live music by the Giardino Strings, accompanied by fizz and wines hand-picked by Mr Chairman, Ian Mitchell. Ian opened proceedings and introduced Roger Martin-Fagg our speaker, some of his interesting predictions are quoted in the paragraph below. Adam Byatt our Consultant Chef, announced the bartlett mitchell Chef of the Year competition and the chosen finalists joined him on stage – before they returned to the kitchen to continue preparing our delicious canapes! The evening then took a very sudden and different direction with stand-up comic Tiff Stevenson (I’m probably not allowed to quote her work), and finished off with a heartfelt close from our very own Wendy Bartlett.

The talk from behavioural economist Roger Martin-Fagg, which on the surface may appear a rather dry topic, gave us lots of food for thought, delivered in Roger’s typically witty way! Some of his more serious soundbites suggesting that:

• “All businesses (including our industry), will need to automate wherever they can to cope with an increasingly acute shortage of labour…, but not to the extent that you lose the magic of what you do.”
• “Every 10% fall in sterling is another 1% on inflation,” he said. “If negotiations don’t go well, Sterling could fall further. We could even see parity with the US$.”
• “The UK currently runs a 6% trade deficit and in the event that negotiations do not go well, then interest rates could rise to 3% with a recession to arrive in 2019!”
• If the UK does manage to strike a free trade deal with the EU then “everything will be ok”. “This year will be much better than people expect, but it could go wrong in the middle to the end of next year as the Bank of England deals with the inflation rate,”

As a tonic, following on from Roger and helping us Make Sense of a Slightly Mad World, bartlett mitchell was delighted that Tiff Stevenson was able to provide the fastest, funniest 20 minutes of razor sharp observational comedy I’ve ever seen.

Brilliant Tiff (who you may know from the TV in; The Office, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Apprentice: You’re Fired!, Mock the Week), gave a hilarious provocative poke at politics and society. She had the audience doubled up in fits of laughter, with many gags at the expense of others – often aimed at men, including our Sales Director, Simon Houston! You can find out more about Tiff at http://tiffstevenson.co.uk/

Getting back to more familiar territory of FOOD, the finalists in our Chef of the Year competition prepared amazing canapes for us all.

Feedback from those who attended the Make Sense of a Slightly Mad World Event suggests bartlett mitchell  achieved a nice balance through great company, fabulous food, live music, wonderful wines, fascinating talks and great fun! I can’t wait for next year.