Conference Man

ELMO R. Zumwalt Junior has been making trouble. Elmo is an Admiral: indeed he is America's Chief of Naval Operations. And he has just lifted the ban against women serving aboard warships at sea.

A small section humbly dedicated to the thousands of delegates, political, industrial, social, professional, athletic, commercial, executive, and drunk, who are currently winging their way back and forth across the world in pursuit of The Golden Junket, in the name of business. And our first speaker on the platform, ladies and gentlemen, to whom all Computer Hardware Aftersales Service Area Supervisors And Group Managers are, I know, going to give a very big hand indeed, is ALAN COREN

The Great Name in Conference Entertainment !

AFTER ALL those Olympic Games, does life seem empty? Have no fear. Let me assure you that another splendid distraction is on its way- pornography. The Lord Longford Show preemeers, as they say, next week. lt will not provide the superabundance of David Coleman, the wealth of action replays, that we got from Munich. But l can safely predict that this is going to be Pornography Autumn in the dear old UK.

Lt's Living Colour, But Can It Dance? Just in lime for our Conference Number cornes depressing news for delegates everywhere. According to Professor Kurti, Professor of Physics at Oxford, "television conferences could replace air travel as a way of bringing people together to conduct business". The conferences, he suggests, could be held in front of big screens, without the people involved leaving their home towns. The shocked italics are ours: Professor Kurti may be a dab hand among the electrons, but when it cornes to an understanding of the executive mind, he's just not in the race. As far as a delegate is concerned, Professor, the whole object of a conference is precisely to get away from his home town; and unless physics can corne up with a TV set that sends the wife away for a fortnight, dispenses endless free booze, and knows the phone numbers of a wide selection of nubile young dollies, it might as well stick to its fast.

THE way 1 heard it, Prince Charles was on a progress round Wales when he stopped to speak to this ordinary kid holding the hand of an old woman in black, and he asked the boy- "ls she your Nanny?". Now the left-wing journalist, an Old Etonian, creased himself at the idea of Charles not realising that ordinary kids do not have Nannies. But the right-wing journalist, who's been to an elementary school, pointed out that the Prince obviously knew that ordinary kids often called their grandmother "Nanny", and creased himself at the idea of a left-wing journalist not realising this. It is difficult to adjudicate on the merits of the two interpretations without consulting Prince Charles which 1 have not been able to do.

Twenty ways to make use of your extra year.

Military missions, sinister "advisers", and aid teams fly in, are thrown out. R.G.G. PRICE visits a tropic airfield

Continuing the adventures of the Great Palaeolithic Hero