Tulkinghorn firmly believes in the old adage that you can tell the man by the company he keeps. Or, indeed, by his shoes – for example, never trust a man who ties his shoelaces in a double knot, he is very likely to be a bounder.
But Tulkinghorn has heard that Lovells partners are opening up a whole new area of character analysis. The firm has just got a brand new email and wored-processing system that includes a voice recognition system. Tulkinghorn understands that this new-fangled technology is a substitute for runners, but has to question whether electronic mail can fetch one a pouch of shag tobacco on the return trip. Anyway, rather awkwardly for Lovells, not all of its lawyers attended Eton or Harrow and therefore have different idiosyncrasies of speech. It is rumoured that there is even a regional accent or two.
Anyway, to help the computers work out what on earth the partners taking part in the pilot were talking about, each had to dictate extracts from a piece of literature to their respective machines.
Real estate partner Nick Cheffings presumably now has a computer that knows how to spell Oompa Loompa, as he chose to read extracts from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Unfortunately, not all those taking part were willing to reveal their names, but Tulkinghorn can exclusively reveal the chosen reading matter of the rest of the pilot: 3001 – The Final Odyssey (presumably from a technology, media and telecoms boffin), Dave Barry in Cyberspace (ditto), Success as a Journey (someone in human resources or marketing Tulkinghorn would wager), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (cross-border M&A specialist), To be a Man (that terrified trainee in the corner) and lastly, Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook (chosen as a joke by someone in charge not realising that it features many of his/her management traits).