Mab Ayyub of Olive Communications opens the 60 seconds with news of software that can be downloaded onto a mobile that will reduce the cost of international calls from say, 45p a minute to around 3p a minute – details awaited. Worryingly, Maurice Press of Disability Resource Team gets someone else’s Barclaycard statement in braille and while his turn-around time for customers is 48 hours, nothing has been heard from Barclays for 72 hours. In this connection, Maurice might like to research the Treating Customers Fairly initiative from the Financial Services Authority which is supposed to avoid this sort of thing.

After a superb dinner at the Travellers’ Club last night, master coach George Metcalfe brandishes a full corona Bolivar cigar (image of Ché Guevera flashes in to my mind here) but the smoke in question is for the purposes of a pneumonic, rather than for consumption: Context or Current reality, their Ideal, Gaps, Action & Review or reinforcement.

Alexis G-M of The Happiness Centre like other health gurus it seems, is actually rather busy while Martin Dunne of Sayers Butterworth suggests that clients get an accountant involved before cutting costs as there is nothing worse than getting it wrong and having to make a second round of redundancies for example, 6 months later.

Paul Marmor of Sherrards is on form with an entertaining telephone conversation 60 seconds, where company winding-up proceedings are one of the weapons in his armoury. Chocolatier Kirsty Joly of Perfectly Tempered is busy with Christmas but asks for and gets intros to boutique hotels.

Lewis Malka of Joseph Sterling Jewellers again gives a superb 60 seconds with examples of how he can save clients money but for a change, talks about watches. On the one hand, he can get discounts of 20 per cent on TAG watches for example – list price say, £1,250 while if you want a Rolex Daytona with a list price of £4,500 he can get you one now for £6,500 if you do not fancy waiting up to 10 years on the waiting list for one.

Emma Ross of PhotoWonder shows a new photo caricature service avilable on-line via ASDA & Tesco which surprise, surprise, works better with photos where people are smiling. Christian Ingerslev of Danesoft manages to keep his eyes open after telling us about Hilary Clinton and crashing a 747 jet into Mexico City. This turns out to be from a dream rather than some new computer game as I first thought.

Yours truly of in2 Consulting Ltd asks for referrals to members’ solicitors as a new report by Dick Clementi formerly of the Bank of England MPC ought to give smaller firms cause for concern. In my years in financial services, I have always felt that a 3-way partnership with an accountant and a solicitor would be beneficial to clients and the professionals concerned.

Mortgage Broker Mike Chan of Shadow Finance will shortly be publishing a Best Buys Table as lots of his clients ask for this. Karelia of Manse and Garrett manages to get 32 per cent off a client’s property, buying at the same price it was in 2002! Her property development background is very useful here.

Mike Jennings of procurement people Avenue is busy as businesses look for ways of saving money. 10 minutes is by our new IT man Des Sutton of Man Bites Dog who offer an impressive range of services and are Microsoft Gold Certificated reminding me that I need to book a 1:1 with him.

Watch this space for details of BRX Bond Street’s Christmas bash.