Name: Paul Bateman
Company: Laurence Associates
Job title: Commercial Director
What did you want to be when you were young? The apprentice who cleaned Kenny Dalglish’s boots.
What was your first full time job? Materials Controller. Kept apprentices delayed after they had been sent for ‘a long weight’.
What is your best quality? Confidence.
What is your worst quality? Getting frustrated with incompetence.
What is your favourite book? Things Can Only Get Better by John O’ Farrell. Comic depiction of the changing British political landscape of the 80s and 90s.
What is your favourite film? Aside from the classics like Debbie Does Dallas, currently The Life Before Her Eyes, but it changes regularly!
What is your favourite restaurant? In Cornwall, Tabbs, but overall the Harvey Nichols Restaurant at the Oxo Tower.
How do you like to relax? A dry crisp evening and a dry crisp wine, with a certain employment lawyer called Rachel.
If you could build a house anywhere in the world where would it be? Just above the little beach between St Mawes and St Just-in-Roseland, but I’d have to replace the dodgy steps down to the sand.
If you could be a superhero, what superpowers would you like to possess? Speed, it would help with my punctuality.
Who was your teenage pin up? Kenny Dalglish, George Best wasn’t fit to lace his drinks!
What is the most valuable lesson you have learned in life? That it’s too short to worry about things that don’t really matter.
Can money buy happiness? No. But it can provide opportunities that may make you happy.
Most annoying TV personality? Is it just me or has Jeremy Paxman become mindlessly aggressive for the sake of it.
What has been the best moment in your career? Standing on the Grand Ballroom stage at the Hilton Park Lane to be awarded the “Small Planning Consultancy of the Year” title.
What has been the worst moment in your career? The local authority repercussions from sending my admin assistant to the personnel office to collect her most gullible employee of the month award.
What do you begrudge spending money on? Car fuel tax when there is no capable public transport alternative.
If you only had £1 left in the entire world, what would you spend it on? Redundancy payments!
What’s the best thing about Cornwall? It’s close to the city, but in so many ways, so far away.
What makes you happy? The friendship of my wife, and the children.
What makes you angry? Barney, the imaginary purple dinosaur.
What’s your favourite holiday destination? The Palm Tree Court at Jebel Ali.
If you could invite any two people for dinner, who would they be and why would you invite them? Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, just for the quotations.
What could you not live without? The expense account!
What’s the greatest invention ever? The internal combustion engine. 125 years and still no viable alternative.
Describe yourself in three adjectives: Assertive, Straight-talking, and loved-up.
