To Davos and beyond

I have to say congratulations to Adrian Monck on his appointment as the new communications head for the World Economic Forum. I'll miss his blog, but what the hell; he’ll be in for a good time there. It’s one hell of a job.

How do I know? I was in line for it a while back, about a year before I parted company with the Telegraph, in fact. The title wasn’t quite the same and the internal changes that would have facilitated it never came about, but the job was roughly the same: travelling the world and spreading the word.

It was sold to me as the ultimate networking opportunity during the few hours I spent in a massively-gated James Bond-base style headquarters in Geneva. Apart from the meet-and-greet stuff at Davos, it offered what was probably the most enviable opportunity to get inside the global corridors of power than any in the media.

I’d gone as far as looking into the possibility of becoming a frontalier, one of those people who buys a small estate over the border in France for the price of a Barbican flat and commutes every day past sweeping vineyards in an open-top sports car.

My only recollection of a downside to the job was that, high up in the hills fronted by a dusty residential road leading to nowhere, where does one go for lunch.

Then I noticed outside on the grass overlooking the lake, loads of them working out in the sun, with a personal trainer.

Beats the queue for Pret any day.