The Secret Liveryman reports.....

By extraordinary conincidence, a cousin of the Weekend Guardian Secret Footballer  is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants.  With magnificent benificence, this personage - while remaining secret - has agreed to write a regular column....

For those of you of a Falafel-eating and Guardian-reading disposition, you may well be aware of a regular column in the sports section of the Weekend Guardian, called The Secret Footballer.

However, for those of you who eat meat and prefer your news written from the starboard side of the vessel, so to speak, you are probably wondering who is The Secret Footballer, and didn’t David Moyes pick eleven of them each week to represent Manchester United while he was masquerading as their manager?

Briefly, The Secret Footballer is allegedly a current or recent Premiership footballer who writes a column each week addressing a topical football issue. These range from how footballers and their agents engineer that mega-money transfer to a ‘big’ team, to the day-to-day pressures of life as a footballer at the top or bottom of the league, and even recounting tales of certain, how we shall say, post-game activities before some players return home to their families.

By extraordinary coincidence, we have discovered that a cousin of The Secret Footballer is, in fact, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants. Not only that, this Liveryman has agreed to write a regular column for our Company Newsletter.

Clearly, The Secret Liveryman may not be able to help you secure a partnership at one of the ‘Big 5’ management consultancies, or provide advice on how to exploit your image rights for several million pounds a year a la Wayne Rooney, but will instead unravel the mysteries of the City of London Corporation and regale the readership with tales of mind-numbing tedium and what it means to be a Liveryman in the City of London.

If you would like to know the correct etiquette for an election by acclamation, the fun and games of belonging to The Wine Club, or to discover exactly what goes on at The Little Ship Club after Common Hall, then this could be the column for you.

For many people, the City of London, or even simply ‘The City”, is something people hear mentioned on almost a daily basis. Whether LIBOR scandals, bankers’ bonuses, or The Lord Mayor’s Show, The City is widely mentioned, but little understood.

However, Freedom of a Livery Company or even achieving the next step of being clothed in the Livery, does propel one into a world of history, tradition and charm, and allow one to demonstrate a level of smugness and feeling of superiority you are unlikely to find elsewhere – Freemasonry notwithstanding!

As a Liveryman, it is essential to take every available opportunity to lead colleagues and friends ‘up the garden path’ and show them just how exalted the circles are within which you now move.

“How was Boris?” your friends will say. Here we go again. Let’s play. “Boris? Boris who?” you reply. “Boris Johnson” they say.  “I think he’s fine. He looked OK in his picture in The Standard last night. Why?”

It’s usually at this point that a little furrow begins to form on the brow of your friends and/or colleagues. Their eyes narrow and you can hear the whirring of cogs and gears in their head.

“I thought you said that you were at a dinner with the Lord Mayor last night? So, didn’t he turn up?”

Now it really starts to get interesting, and you can begin to have a little fun.

“I was at dinner, and yes, she was there?”   “She?”  “Yes, she.” Then, in your smuggest of smug modes, you can follow up with “you do know that the Lord Mayor is a woman, don’t you?”

They do say that the only friends a policeman has are other policemen. If you are not careful, you may well find that the only friends you have as a Liveryman are other Liverymen.

Until next time.

The Secret Liveryman