Page 133 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 12 – AEGIS INSURANCE CO LTD
GM’s and AGMs were automatically part of these meetings which caused much competition in and amongst our direct reports.
The second was that John Bull had a private pub built as an annex to the boardroom and you had really arrived if you got a key to the pub. However, the ultimate status symbol was if you got a key to John Bull’s private toilet. Unfortunately for me, by the time I got the key to the toilet, which was halfway up the stairs between the two floors, I had broken my ankle, so I couldn’t get up there! So, the key was there for several months before I enjoyed this ultimate recognition.
Another interesting convention at Aegis was that there was an executive-only breakfast held every morning at 10 o’clock on the roof garden. However, unfortunately some people saw it as an opportunity to get the ear of John Bull and political or Machiavellian things started to happen. Sandy Rawlinson and I decided the only way to fix this was to boycott the breakfast, which we did. That was the end of the breakfasts.
Fridays in the New Club ( a businessmens’ club at the end of Loveday Street in Johannesburg) was another Aegis tradition. It was not only an Aegis tradition, as I think half of the Johannesburg insurance industry used to drink there (and eat). It had the longest bar in South Africa. We would typically go there for drinks before lunch, then go up to the dining room for lunch at John’s Bull’s private table. Following lunch there would be a push to have ‘one standing up’. Basil Fussell was the main culprit of this, although he himself never overindulged. He would always leave, saying he had a letter to sign. Most people never went back to work on Friday afternoons and had to phone their secretaries to get them to drive them home.
In those days you literally did have to sign your outgoing (paper) mail. One day technology visited us in the form of a letter from Head Office in Norwich asking us to get a fax machine. John Bull asked Alan Mason what it was. When Alan explained it was like a photocopier which could transmit documents over the phone line, John was appalled. There was no way he was going to have Head Office sending him instant messages and expecting instant replies,
133