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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2013
Comment & Analysis
BBC said I wasn't sexy enough
T was the era before Nigella, but even so Delia Smith has revealed that BBC bosses thought she was not “sexy enough” for television in the 1980s. Smith, 71, said she was considered “too educational” by BBC Two bosses. After her first series Family Fare failed to attract enough viewers on BBC One, she was later given a show on BBC Two but it did not impress the channel’s controller. “The next controller said, ‘I don’t think this is sexy enough. I don’t think it belongs on my channel. I think it should go in education’. Apparently I was not sexy enough. I suppose it was a blow, but you can’t be everything can you?” she told The Mirror. But Smith said the knock-back was the “best thing that ever happened” and inspired her to go back to basics, making her shows more popular. Speaking last night at a Bafta event where she was hailed as a “national treasure” and given a special award for her contribution to broadcasting, Smith said the best thing about her career was the response from her viewers. “I think the most rewarding and satisfying thing is meeting the people who use the recipes, read-
ing their letters- well, now their emails- but that’s always rewarding when you realise you are actually reaching people through this wonderful medium called television.” She also spoke about her recently launched online cookery skills course, which she hopes will educate a new generation of cooks. “At the moment we’ve got Delia Online cookery school and that’s my passion at the moment, to try and teach younger people who have not had any lessons and try and teach them the basics.” But the much-loved TV cook admitted her online school will be her last venture into cooking programmes. “There is no better way to teach. When I have done this I will stop, as it will be done for ever” she said. Smith began her TV career in 1973 as presenter of Family Fare, following a brief spell as a swimwear model before becoming a cookery writer for The Mirror. Her first cookery book How to Cheat at Cooking was published in 1971 and was later made into a three-part television series called Delia Smith's Cookery Course.
By Paul Krugman
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•Delia-Smith
Her most recent series have included One is Fun, Delia's How to Cook, and Delia's Classic Christmas. •Culled from The Independent
Mike Adenuga - A Samurai at 60 •Contd. from page 11
raking in unconscionable multiple millions on the basis that there was no way a "Per Second" billing for GSM telephone usage was possible in Nigeria, to sit up and know that a war was on. A Samurai nay, a Sumo wrestler had arrived on the scene. The Barracuda was determined to eat them live - salt or no salt, maggi or no maggi. The rugged pursuit of his goal which culminated in his acquisition of the GSM licence is perhaps the ultimate public display of his ruggedness as a businessman and his fierce determination to succeed in life. Adenuga had neither a golden spoon or nor a silver spoon -possibly a plastic spoon which was the business tutelage his enterprising mother gave him early in life. He had lost his father early in his life - the first Michael Agbolade Adenuga. I often wonder whether the first Michael Agbolade Adenuga knew that he would not live long, that was why he decided to duplicate his name in our hero of today. M. A. Jr. as he often signs his documents, is now a major brand in Africa. Perhaps the next task is to make the name a worldwide universal brand like Bill Gates, Donald Trump or Ray Kroc of McDonald's. Adenuga had led an indifferent life as a secondary school boy at the famous Ibadan Grammar School. But just before he left for the United States a chance meeting in Lagos at a social gathering with the then unknown Lt. or Capt. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida turned out to a meeting with destiny. The two of them got on like fish and water and became great pals. He openly acknowledges the good hand that IBB later dealt him and his business in life. But the question is - Where are the other Nigerians that IBB tried to provoke to success by being given an oil licence? His training in America, the land of Horato Alger, of Nelson Rockefeller, of Andrew Carnegie, of J. P. Morgan, of W. Clement, Stone of Robert Schuller and his MBA at Pace University, New York must have inspired him that there is no mountain high or big enough to stop him from achieving any dream he determined to achieve. Returning to Nigeria, he dabbled in commodities and real estate becoming a millionaire before age 30. Most young men of 30 then, even now would have lost their head with that asset value but not Mike Adenuga. Rather, plotting his way to the top with the calculation of a master tactician he decided to go for the big game. He obtained two banking licences and soon after an oil bloc. Ultimate risk taker There is the uncharitable gossip that he was fronting or is it backing for a known military officer. But there was a number of Nigerians that the IBB government decided to empower by such means. Every one of them except M. A. Jr. either sold off their licences to some pink coloured men or leased them out to collect yearly rent. Against all odds, against the blandishments of foreign oil companies who told him he must want his head examined to think as a Nigerian he wanted to actually utilise, risk tens of millions
of dollars, dig the ground for oil without absolute, cast-iron guarantee of success. But M. A. Jr., the ultimate risk-taker did just that. The rest, as they say, is history. This must have emboldened him to take the big, very big gamble of hundreds of millions of dollars to set up competition and get into the ring in the GSM market even against multinational brands like MTN, with then more financial, technical, management experience than the young Glo/David. Adenuga was hitting them everywhere. The first blow was his introduction of the "per second billing". While his competitors were still struggling, trying to figure out what had bit them, he slashed the Sim card cost to N1.00. By that time, I myself thought he wanted his head examined. But he knew what he wanted - to lure customers onto the Glo network - and then they would have to buy recharge cards to stay alive there. He must have been a good study of John D. Rockefeller. It is not only in his triumph against all odds in the Globacom issue that the Mike Adenuga genius is evident. He had prior to this acquired the loss-making Premium Motor Spirit dispenser, National Oil and Marketing Company Ltd, done a no-sentiment management overhaul that had the old management screaming and cursing and shouting - Blue Murder. Within a span of five years, he turned the company around to profitability. In this operation, which put him very much in the public eye, he showed that he did not mix business with sentiments. In hiring senior managers of any of his companies, after the recruitment consultants have done their jobs and done all the short listings, Adenuga is wont to want to sit on the panel where the final decisions are taken. Why? Not because he wants to impress the new entrants as to who the ultimate boss is but because in all entrepreneurs and management gurus from Henry Ford to Rockefeller to Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch, Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, Warren Buffet; there is the quality or gene in them to enable them to "smell" would-be staffers that have not just brilliant I.Os, impressive C.Vs but that unquantifiable factor that makes an employee an achiever, an ultimate star. I think the Jews calls that "chutzpah". In any country, in any economy, you cannot run a conglomerate with trillions in yearly turnover without interfacing with the political leaders of your era. In Africa especially, this is a very tricky issue because today you have a liberal government, the next day a very conservative one and at various times you have ones that come to power after a dawn broadcast to "Fellow Countrymen". I think in this, having regard to the fact that Mike Adenuga was still in his 30s when he had to "walk" the political tight-rope with the Caesars of Nigeria. He has "walked this walk" so skilfully for over 30 years that he deserves a seat as a Visiting Professor of Political Science at any of our top universities. Nowhere is his acute understanding of the political terrain and affairs of Nigeria more in evidence than during the "Rumble in the Jungle" of the 2001-2007 political era.
Not Enough Inflation
The arrogance of our major political players would not allow them to sit at Mike Adenuga's feet to learn about "How to swim with the sharks without being eaten alive?" Some discussions I had with him during that era showed how perspicacious his understanding was. He knew where everybody would end up. Those that would get the yellow card, those that would get the red card and how a player masquerading as a referee would eventually dribble himself out of the field. He was just brilliant. He knew who had the JOKER. It was from him that I got a quote I have treasured since then in my treasury. Reflecting on two major gladiators of that era, Adenuga said that the mistake that one major player made was - "You don't bring out gun in a quarrel if you don't intend to use it." I will never forget that. Mike Adenuga is the only person that I know - military opponent, politician or otherwise who totally and thoroughly outflanked, outsmarted outwitted "Aremu Aladiye". Not even the legendary IBB, the "evil genius" who was manoeuvred out of the field, not even the murderous Abacha who was the Federal Reserve Bank's representative in Nigeria during his era, was able to achieve this. What kind of a person is this guy? Finally, a word about Mike Adenuga Jr's generosity. Over the last 30 years he has reached out to hundreds if not thousands of people in cash, in kind, buying or building houses and giving them away, giving out naira in tens of millions, giving out FX in various currencies in hundreds of thousands that I will not be surprised if his welfare budget is not in the billions every year. There is this contemporary testimony of a friend of mine-a-man-about-town in Lagos social circles who had a major health challenge and managed to prevail over the understandable stumbling blocks that Adenuga has erected to prevent Nigerian pan-handlers from eating him up alive. He asked his aides to enquire where the fellow wanted to be treated - the U.K, the US or India. Inexplicably the fellow chose Nigeria and Adenuga shelled out breathtaking millions in Naira to his hospital. On discharge, the fellow wanted to come say "Thank you" to his benefactor - but Adenuga made himself unavailable. Up till today, the man has been unable to see the guy who paid millions for his healthcare. At 60, Mike Adenuga would not obviously be interested in the free bus ticket on London Transport to which he would be entitled. Rather, I think he would be looking for the next mountain to conquer. Can I show him one? He should try to grow seven clones of Mike Adenuga Jr. - seven being the number of perfection. Can I send my son across? But I don't want him working 30 hours a day like Adenuga. Please, don't kill my son for me. Mike - Welcome to the Senior Citizens' Club. Happy Birthday to the SAMURAI our own ZAIBATSU!
VER since the financial crisis struck, and the Federal Reserve began “printing money” in an attempt to contain the damage, there have been dire warnings about inflation — and not just from the Ron Paul/Glenn Beck types. Thus, in 2009, the influential conservative monetary economist Allan Meltzer warned that we would soon become “inflation nation.” In 2010, the Parisbased Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development urged the Fed to raise interest rates to head off inflation risks (even though its own models showed no such risk). In 2011, Representative Paul Ryan, then the newly installed chairman of the House Budget Committee, raked Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, over the coals, warning of looming inflation and intoning solemnly that it was a terrible thing to “debase” the dollar. And now, sure enough, the Fed really is worried about inflation. You see, it’s getting too low. Before I get to the trouble with low inflation, however, let’s talk about what we should have learned so far. It’s not hard to see where inflation fears were coming from. In its efforts to prop up the economy, the Fed has bought more than $2 trillion of stuff — private debts, housing agency debts, government bonds. It has paid for these purchases by crediting funds to the reserves of private banks, which isn’t exactly printing money, but is close enough for government work. Here comes hyperinflation! Or, actually, not. From the beginning, it was or at least should have been obvious that the financial crisis had plunged us into a “liquidity trap,” a situation in which many people figure that they might just as well sit on cash. America spent most of the 1930s in a liquidity trap; Japan has been in one since the mid1990s. And we’re in one now. Economists who had studied such traps — a group that included Ben Bernanke and, well, me — knew that some of the usual rules of economics are in abeyance as long as the trap lasts. Budget deficits, for example, don’t drive up interest rates; printing money isn’t inflationary; slashing government spending has really destructive effects on incomes and employment. The usual suspects dismissed all this analysis; it was “liquidity claptrap,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute. But that was four years ago, and the liquidity trappers seem to have been right, after all. And it’s worth mentioning another issue on which the inflation non-worriers have been vindicated: how to measure inflation trends. The Fed relies on a measure that excludes food and energy prices, which fluctuate widely from month to month. Many commentators ridiculed this focus on “core” inflation, especially in early 2011, when rising food and energy prices briefly sent “headline” inflation above 4 percent even as the core stayed low. But, sure enough, inflation came back down. So all those inflation fears were wrong, and those who fanned those fears proved, in case you were wondering, that their economic doctrine is completely wrong — not that any of them will ever admit such a thing. And, at this point, inflation — at barely above 1 percent by the Fed’s favored measure — is dangerously low. Why is low inflation a problem? One answer is that it discourages borrowing and spending and encourages sitting on cash. Since our biggest economic problem is an overall lack of demand, falling inflation makes that problem worse. Low inflation also makes it harder to pay down debt, worsening the private-sector debt troubles that are a main reason overall demand is too low. So why is inflation falling? The answer is the economy’s persistent weakness, which keeps workers from bargaining for higher wages and forces many businesses to cut prices. And if you think about it for a minute, you realize that this is a vicious circle, in which a weak economy leads to too-low inflation, which perpetuates the economy’s weakness. And this brings us to a broader point: the utter folly of not acting to boost the economy, now. Whenever anyone talks about the need for more stimulus, monetary and fiscal, to reduce unemployment, the response from people who imagine themselves wise is always that we should focus on the long run, not on short-run fixes. The truth, however, is that by failing to deal with our short-run mess, we’re turning it into a long-run, chronic economic malaise. I wrote recently about how, by allowing long-term unemployment to persist, we’re creating a permanent class of unemployed Americans. The problem of toolow inflation is very different in detail, but similar in its implications: here, too, by letting short-run economic problems fester we’re setting ourselves up for a longrun, perhaps permanent, pattern of economic failure. The point is that we are failing miserably in responding to our economic challenge — and we will be paying for that failure for many years to come. Culled from New York Times