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Harry Pearson:
The Business Buzz
Continuing his exclusive Tees Business column, Teesside-born author Harry Pearson presents his do’ s and don’ ts when it comes to winning, or losing, at a business awards event …
My awards night advice, whether you win or lose
So the awards season is upon us. For a woman, this generally means complaining that they have to buy a new dress( again), while for a man it means trying to fool yourself into believing that a dinner suit you bought 30 years ago, a) still fits and, b) is actually coming back into style again.
Both of these illusions are shattered on the night when, a) one of the front button pops off at such speed it rebounds off the mirror and hits you in the mouth knocking a filling loose and, b) your teenage children laugh hysterically and ask if you are going as Lurch from The Addams Family.
This is, of course, a minor problem. The real trouble starts if you have been nominated for an award.
This is a nerve-racking experience, not just because you are eager to find out if you won or not, but because you must brace yourself to react in the correct manner. If you do not win then you must set your face to give the impression of being neither shocked nor disappointed, because if you were that would suggest you are the sort of arrogant so-andso who thinks he deserves to win.
Next, you have to give the impression of being delighted for the actual winner, even though you know they are utterly useless, far less deserving of the prize than you are and probably only got it at all because they are the brother-in-law of one of the judges.
Yes, you must grin and applaud like you really think they are fantastic and you never had the slightest thought of winning yourself, even though what has just happened has deprived you of a tidy sum of money, at least a third of which you have already spent on 1970s toys on eBay.
I speak for myself of course. You are probably all generous, warm-hearted people who don’ t go buying a mint and boxed set of Battling Topps on the off chance that someone will think you deserve a financial bonus for doing your day job.
An even bigger problem is what to do in the event you do win. It is easy to mock these Hollywood celebs who go all weepy, but at the end of a long evening with free wine, it is not so easy to hold it together.
You think you are going to just dismiss the whole thing with a cool one-liner, but instead start thanking everyone from the midwife who helped birth you to the figure who has always inspired you by his glowing example and joie de vivre( Phil Stamp).
And, of course, one thing you must never do is wave the award above your head, yell“ That’ ll show those swines at Wigwam, Coleslaw & Fondue, who somehow thought they were too good for me, what a bunch of ignorant losers they are!” before launching into a chorus of“ Are you watching, Newcastle?”
No, that won’ t do you, or anybody else, any good at all. As the security guards who led me away that time in 2009 kept saying.
What do you do with the trophy? I once won a massive cut glass slab which is the size of a set of cricket stumps. Carrying it back from London on the train without either smashing it or decapitating a fellow passenger was an effort in itself.
Once it was in the house, the immediate question was“ Where are you planning to put that horrible great thing?”
I had been considering placing it on prominent display so as to impress visitors, but apparently that was not what we do. So it is now tucked away in the wardrobe, lurking, ready to whack me across the shin when I go to get out my tiny tuxedo.