East Midlands Business to Business Exhibition

 

The infinite range of ways in which people choose to make their living never ceases to amaze me.

 

I’ve just attended this business-to-business exhibition in Nottingham and met Chris and Edward from Upper Cut Productions, who specialise in aerial photography.

 

Aerial footage is traditionally a hugely expensive luxury but not any more. Upper Cut are leaders in their field, using highly sophisticated, gyro-stabilised miniature flying machines (I like the octagonal one with an improbably eight rotor blades!) to send remote-control cameras aloft to film or photograph anything from a sports event to a pop video, a wedding or the roof of Lincoln Cathedral – it’s a lot safer and probably cheaper than sending up men on scaffolding.

 

Their clients include the BBC and Channel 4, which is as close as we get to a common thread, since (as I mention in my after-dinner talks and speeches) so many of my celebrity interviews have been conducted at the invitation of one or other of these broadcasters.

 

Equally interesting to me, if rather less glamorous, was the stall devoted to Bakers Waste Services. It’s the Baker family’s firm called, not a company specialising in waste dough disposal.

 

Business Development Manager Judith Hollingworth mentioned to me that they even have a method now for recycling disposable nappies. The poop is flushed away, the fibre filling is composted and the plastic is recycled to make – if I remember rightly – roof tiles , of all things.

 

Several other exhibitors made an impression, particularly Chris Hanbury at recruitment company Ingeus (and you don’t have to be a genius to figure out the origin of the name…). They provide companies with well-prepared potential recruits but charge no fee. Sounds too good to be true, but they are Government-funded, with a mission to get people off benefits and into work. Given the coming cuts, this must be one of the few areas of Government expenditure that should survive unscathed.