Last week was a bit of a rollercoaster at TTJ.
After months of planning, a whole raft of pre-publicity and our best bibs and tuckers dry-cleaned, we were all primed ready to go to our 11th TTJ Awards. Then, less than 24 hours before the event, our guest speaker Lord Sebastian Coe dropped the bombshell – he was double-booked. Something about a big sporting event in 2012 apparently.
Fortunately for us, however, at the 11th hour and 59th minute, we were able to book a similarly big gun – Tony Blair’s former communications director, aka “spin doctor extraordinaire” Alastair Campbell.
While we had all aged 10 years, he, of course, took the whole thing in his stride, treating our record-breaking number of guests (417) to political anecdotes, plus advice on pushing the timber industry’s sustainability message home to government.
He may not have talked about the opportunities presented by the Olympics the way we had anticipated Lord Coe would, but he did talk about celebrating excellence, which is what our Awards are all about.
He also spoke about the need to cultivate a positive attitude. The British, he said, are too self-deprecating, too keen to underplay their achievements; so he commended the way in which awards events instill a sense of pride and a healthy competitive spirit.
The TTJ Awards are now a big deal, and so is the timber industry – a fact that those outside it often fail to recognise.
Over Sunday lunch a short while ago, a friend of mine was explaining to a teenager what I did for a living. “Sally’s a journalist,” she said. “She works for Timber Weekly and writes about planks of wood.” When the sniggering had subsided I said, possibly a little too haughtily, that TTJ was a B2B publication covering a £6bn industry which was not to be sneezed at. I think I made my point, but I’m not sure I’ll be invited for lunch again.
Finally, congratulations once again to this year’s winners and nominees and many thanks to those companies and individuals who may not have been shortlisted, but whose involvement contributed enormously to another successful TTJ Awards.
