There’s an insurance angle to everything… even the end of the world. In November, I was lucky enough to wangle a press trip to Geneva to visit the Large Hadron Collider or, if you prefer, the “doomsday machine”. So if it does cause a black hole that sucks in the planet, what kind of insurance cover do they have for that?
Month: January 2009
Warren Buffett and the business of condensing 1000 pages into 1000 words
When I agreed to turn around a profile of billionaire investor Warren Buffett in a week, I didn’t realise that this new biography was nearly 1000 pages long. Fortunately, it was fascinating – you don’t get to be that rich without being a very unusual person…
Harry Redknapp who?
Interviewing motivational speakers can be invigorating, baffling or, on the wrong day, a red rag to a very cynical bull. But rarely is it controversial, unless you include their football analogies in a how-to guide without having any idea what you’re talking about. Sorry Steve…
Going underground
Among my more exciting assignments of late was a day spent undercover with a team of private investigators looking into insurance claims. I learned how to spot a a surveillance team, how not to be seen, and how it’s slightly less glamorous than it looks on the telly. Oh, and how there’s much, much more of it than you’d think. Women make the best surveillance operatives I’m told – but you have to be prepared to sit still in the back of a white van for eight hours at a time. I’m not planning a career change.