Ratners

The Tory grandee Anthony Steen, 69, who said voters had no right to know about his £87,000 expenses claims is surely a contender for that illustrious club Ratners. You know, the exclusive group of people who have torpedoed their own careers with ill-judged public statements. (For younger readers jewellery entrepreneur Gerald Ratner lost £500m after cracking a joke in public that some of his goods were ‘crap’). Let’s just reflect for a moment on the full idiocy of the MP for Totnes who told the BBC: “You know what it's about? Jealousy. I have got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It's the photographs that make it look like Balmoral but it's a merchant's house from the 19th century. It's not particularly attractive, but it does me nicely.” Now Totnes isn’t that far from Torquay. But not even Basil Fawlty would have been so dumb. Through my media training activities, I come across examples of foot-in-mouth disease all the time, many happily supplied by frustrated PR professionals whose clients seem hell bent on self destruction, despite repeated warnings. Another member of Ratners is surely the Army chief, who, when asked in 2005 why there are more suicides in the Army, than in the Navy or the Royal Air Force (and a third more than Civvy Street, incidentally) said that recruits to the Navy and RAF were “of a higher level of educational attainment”. Yes, soldiers are thick, in other words. A real comfort to the families of those who died at Deepcut Barracks. I’m fascinated by the psychology of all this. There seems to be a trigger in the psyche of some individuals which flips the moment they are put under the perceived stress of speaking publicly. Their utterances make Prince Philip seem measured, diplomatic even. I recall training the CEO of a very large and highly successful engineering conglomerate who had to present to city analysts but who could not wait to tell me, in his trial presentation, about the £40m his company had lost in some business venture. On another training session, simulating a crisis, in this case an explosion at a factory, a delegate I doorstepped told me he knew nothing. “Why not?” I asked. “Because,” he said “I have been abroad looking at alternative sites because we’re thinking of closing the plant.” It was the truth and potentially a very good story! In some ways it’s comforting to know that many people who reach the top in business, politics or elsewhere have this fault in their neuro-linguistic wiring. What can be done? Well, role play sessions can certainly identify the issue. Then interviewees can be counselled to use a simple technique, built around a few phrases, designed to engage the brain before the mouth opens. I must clarify, this isn’t stalling or avoiding questions, just keeping the interviewee well away from the self-destruct button. The methodology, if followed correctly, is foolproof. Most delegates pick it up quickly. If you are asked a question, why blunder in with the first thing that comes to mind? A former chairman of Britvic, a tough talking Glaswegian, summed it up nicely when he said on a course: “So, these phrases, they are just 10 different ways of saying ‘bollocks’.” Er, yes, but please don’t say that in public.