Taking Stock - Hell is ... an accountants' dinner lasting an

The rubber chicken circuit takes its toll on many within this most convivial of professions. Often the only incentive to keep the great and the good going is the promise of dinner in some grand building in or around the City, featuring expensive wine, rich food and exalted conversation. But one man’s holy grail is another man’s hell. Ask John ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ Mortimer. While most popular visions of hell involve red-horned devils, searing flames and regretful sinners carrying out some onerous task, Mortimer’s take is different. Like Sartre it’s other people, but it’s a very particular group of people. ‘If I had a personal vision of hell,’ he told the Daily Mail last week, ‘it would have to be a black tie dinner for chartered accountants, with no women, and going on for all eternity with endless speeches about the euro.’ What an unlikely vision. Anyway it’s time for TS to loosen our bow ties, suck on a fat cigar or two and, what was that about the UK meeting the convergence criteria … ?: