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BRIEFCASESHORT-CHANGING THE BOSS Fortunately Billiton chairman Brian Gilbertson has a sense of humour, which is just as well because last Sunday's London Sunday Times ran an article on the most overpaid and underpaid chief executives among the FTSE top 100 companies. Gilbertson comes in at 100 and although his basic salary puts him in the "respectable" category, once bonus and share incentives have been taken into account, he appears to have been short-changed by around R7.5-million, or 64%. Shareholders can congratulate themselves that they are getting good value for money. While a car boot sale at the Gilbertson home is still some way off, Brian can at least console himself that, should he find himself strapped for cash at the end of the month, he can always phone SmithKline Beecham chief executive Jan Leschly who, according to the survey, is the most overpaid executive, pulling in a whopping extra R48-million above his true market value.
STIRRED, NOT SHAKEN The Grace Hotel was swift to come up with a stylish response to last week's Briefcase about the correct mixing of dry martinis. Within days an elegantly printed invitation arrived, offering BT hacks a visit to The Grace any time in November to sample a dry martini mixed to their individual specification and to lay their weary heads down for the night if it all proves too much. SPORTING OFFER The BT award for optimistic advertising goes to The House of Sports Cars which, last week, in the midst of the market crash, was offering a Lamborghini Diablo (second hand if you please) for a mere R1.2-million. A BT reader who has been keen to buy one of the new BMW Z3 sports cars told us that the long waiting list has suddenly and mysteriously shortened. Last week his BMW dealer phoned to say he had just had a cancellation and a new Z3 would be immediately available. Realising that he hadn't made quite the sales impact he had hoped, the salesman was back within the hour offering a year's free insurance. LIMP RESPONSE IN HONG KONG The Durex Global Sex Survey landed on BT's desk this week, together with a complimentary banana flavoured condom in a handy emergency carry pack (with instructions for use). The survey reveals that Hong Kong has the world's worst lovers. The Brits come a surprising fourth after South Africa in third position. Top seed (geddit?) is, rather predictably, France. Hong Kong's lamentable performance between the sheets is almost certainly due to their preoccupation with making money. They spend an average of 12.3 minutes on the sex act, no doubt breaking off from time to time to check the Hang Seng index. Americans, by contrast, keep going for 25.3 minutes on average. Beijing's official interpretation of this data would probably be that China is more efficient than America. When it comes to considerate lovers you may be surprised to read that men are more interested in satisfying their sexual partners than are women, who rate their own personal sexual satisfaction as most important. Perhaps men also lie more often in sex surveys than women do.
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