Main Performers | Sir Paul Chambers, Mr W B Batty (MD Ford Motors), Prime Minister Rt Hon. Mr Edward Heath, Mr Ray Gunter, Mr Hugh Cudlipp (Chair, International Publishing Corporation) - speakers |
Performance Notes | "The annual jamboree of the Institute of Directors at the Albert Hall is as unchanging as the ritual of Guy Fawkes night, and the sentiments expressed every year are equally predictable. One of the best loved features of the whole day is the lunch break, when 5,000 dark-suited directors balance luncheon boxes on their laps to the starins of stirring music on the Albert Hall's great organ.
Sir Richard Powell, the Institute's director-general whose planning and control of this operation epitomizes the enterprise to which this conference is dedicated, exercises his purchasing power in a typically individual way. On a tight budget - which allows him £1 5s a head - he has the boxes designed for the institute and places has won orders for biscuits (Carrs of Carlisle), wine (rose from Harvey's), blue Stilton (Webster's Dairy, Melton Mowbray), and cigarettes (Fribourg and Treyer, Haymarket).
The heart of the meal - chicken, lamb cutlet, salad, and orange souffle - is supplied by Lyons, 'the only firm that can cope with a single order of this size.' With military timing refridgerated vans wait two days outside the Albert Hall ready to unload on D-day of the 5,000 lunches." (The Times, 8 Novemer 1968) |