Blessed be Yorkshire as hymn of praise to county stirs convention

ACTOR and adventurer Brian Blessed stole the show at yesterday's Yorkshire International Business Convention with an impassioned plea to the region's business people to use their "Yorkshire spirit" to beat the recession.

In an uproarious speech, the 73-year-old miner's son from Mexborough said businesses must use "team work, vision, care, seriousness and humour" as he had in his great physical feats climbing Everest and reaching the North Pole.

"We are going to make it. There's no-one like you. I believe in mankind and I believe we are the godhead," he told the audience of nearly 900 at the Yorkshire Event Centre near Harrogate.

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Mr Blessed said his heart softened when he returned to the region and said: "Yorkshire people are serious. They have gravitas. They have humour. They hold the country together. They are the backbone of the country."

The star of Flash Gordon took the audience through his career which began as a 14-year-old school leaver working as an undertaker's assistant and went on to take in spells with Royal Shakespeare Company, the Z-Cars and I, Claudius TV series and a documentary on the climber Mallory which led to a second career as an adventurer.

Headline speaker Sir David Frost, who arrived by helicopter after speaking at the convention's East Yorkshire event in Bridlington, spoke about his experience interviewing Richard Nixon, the US president, and why he agreed to hand over editorial control for the subsequent Frost-Nixon film.

He said: "It was better that it was not Frost on Frost, but somebody else on Frost."

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On interviewing technique, Sir David cited the words of a Labour Party leader who told him he asked "beguiling questions with potentially lethal consequences".

Michell Mone, the lingerie entrepreneur, told delegates how she built Ultimo, a 55m business, after a tough childhood in Glasgow.

She was inspired to invent a series of new bra types, despite the initial scepticism of her husband, after an evening spent wearing an "uncomfortable" Wonderbra at a dinner dance.

"He said, 'you are never (going to)'. I got into all sorts of marriage problems and I came up with tonnes of ideas before Ultimo."

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Mrs Mone's debt grew to 420,000 but her business took off after Selfridge's sold out six months of Ultimo stock in just six hours. Now she runs a business with four factories in China and an office in Hong Kong.

Peter Burkill, the former BA pilot who piloted a Boeing 777 to safety after it suffered a double engine failure, told how he had just 30 seconds to come up with a plan of action.Two years on from the near-disaster, he said: "The failure I had was unprecedented. It was out of the blue."

Mr Burkill, who has since taken voluntary redundancy from BA, described his fear that all of the 152 people on board would be killed. He nearly broke down in tears when he recalled how he said goodbye to his wife, Maria, and children, just before impact.

Rene Carayol, the motivational speaker, told businesses they must focus on leadership rather than management to steer their businesses out of recession. They should "manage a little less and lead a little more", accept that "their heritage is not their destiny" and realise that "culture is more powerful than strategy".

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Chris Hutcheson, Gordon Ramsay's business partner and father-in-law, delivered a polemic on Britain's declining standards of customer

service and why it pays to say sorry.

He urged companies to do something special when they make a mistake by "bringing out the lifeboat" or risk losing that customer forever.

Organiser Mike Firth said: "I thought it went extremely well. The morning was one of the best morning sessions we have had. The afternoon session had a serious talk on customer service followed by a cameo performance from Sir David Frost."

n A special report on the Convention will appear in Tuesday's Business Post.

Leaders urged to make needs known

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Yorkshire Forward's chairman used the event to urge business leaders to waste no time in telling government ministers what kind of support they want from the regional development agency in the future.

Terry Hodgkinson, who steps down later this year, said: "I'm very proud of what my organisation has done over the last decade."

Speaking about the agency's uncertain future, he said: "Whatever is decided we need to make sure we have something that unites local government and businesses and bats for the region in Whitehall."

Mr Hodgkinson added: "We have absolutely no time to waste. If we don't act now we will get behind and if we get left behind we will stay behind for good."

In a tribute to event organiser Mike Firth, he said: "This is a celebration of our region and our region's businesses. You have helped to put Yorkshire and this region on the world stage."