UK Ferry Tickets

It is often said, with some justification, that if journalists were skilled at anything, they would do it rather than just write about it.

Small wonder, then, that the media tide turned against lastminute.com (another thing we love to do is build people up so that we can shoot them down).

A couple of brainy toffs – Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox – seemed to have made a fortune for just a few years’ hard work.

As an attractive woman, Martha helped sell glossy magazines for a while, but there was more than a touch of the green-eyed monster among many journalists, who had a field day when the company’s results failed to meet city expectations.

I’ve interviewed both of them many times since the lastminute.com float. Brent is highly intelligent and driven, but difficult to warm to if you don’t agree with his vision of the world. My most recent encounter with him was during a travel industry conference where I questioned the direction of a company that was once the role model for selling direct, but then changed strategy to sell through travel agents.

I think the company is a strange mix of traditional and online businesses and its saving grace was Sabre agreeing to pay around £600 million for the firm. In the six months to March 31, lastminute.com made a profit of just £100,000 and that’s before you take into account interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

Brent hasn’t spoken to me since that conference.

I found Martha easier to deal with. She had a nice line in self-deprecation and once insisted to me, at an industry dinner, that she was a very dull holiday companion, preferring to visit museums and places of historical interest rather than partying.

Martha seemed to have everything when she left lastminute.com – several million pounds in the bank and job offers galore. Most people would have given anything to swap places with her.

And then she had that terrible crash.

It was a sobering reminder that no one has everything and, just when life seems to be going well, it has a habit of kicking you where it hurts.

Now, after more than a year of hell, its heart warming to see Martha well on the way to making a full recovery.

It took her seven months just to sit up out of bed – you need some bottle to come back from that. But, despite being full of metal hinges and brackets, she’s almost back to her old self.

I wish her the best of luck but I’m not sure about her latest venture, a chain of upmarket karaoke clubs. Surely the world doesn’t need sloshed Chelsea girls giving us their renditions of “I will survive”.

But, hey, what do I know? After all, I’m only a journalist and you know what they say about us.

Guest Article by Jeremy Skidmore

Sunday, July 31st, 2005