Alan Tyers - Who Moved My Stilton?: The Victorian Guide to Getting Ahead in Business

BY LADY CINDERELLA ROCKERFELLER, RAGS-TO-RICHES PUMPKIN MAGNATE & UPWARDLY MOBILE SIX-TIME WIDOW

W elcome, Dear Reader, to our little book. For the man who wishes to hone his skills in the arts of management, negotiation, motivation and employee-enfearment, it is a simply indispensible companion.

I myself have been an indispensible companion to six very rich men, all of whom were some years older than myself and all of whom have sadly passed away. In the course of my tragic marriages, I have learned a great deal about the acquisition of wealth via trades as diverse as shipbuilding, property, haberdashery and certain earthier branches of the entertainment industry. All share many common characteristics, with the exception of property, where constant dishonesty is the only requisite attribute.

Since the regrettable dismantling of the feudal system, well-bred Englishmen have found commerce to be a rather vulgar milieu, but times are changing. Whether you have been defrocked by the Church, snubbed by the heiress of your choice, ejected from the Army for a quivering upper lip or simply born with an inadequately expansive country seat, there is no longer any shame in attempting to make your own money. Without further ado, let us get to it.

Cinders

BY SIR RODERICK ROCKY RHODES

ADVENTURE CAPITALIST

I make no secret of the fact that I have made rather a lot of money, and I expect you would like to be able to say the same. I bagged my first fortune selling ice to the Eskimo peoples of the frozen North Pole, and then attempted to get my hands on an even greater sum by selling Eskimos to other Eskimos. Sadly, thanks to the meddling of various do-gooders, this lucrative trade has become difficult to conduct without unwelcome attention from the authorities, but the successful man of commerce does not worry too much about a little thing like the law, nor fuss about being chased for hundreds of miles across the tundra by irate Eskimo Abolitionists.

However, the experience was a painful and clear reminder that unless the City is allowed to do exactly as it pleases without the officious interference of government, morality &c., our great nations status as a world economic leader will be lost forever.

I digress; you of course wish to know about the specific methods and techniques that enabled me to build up a fortune from almost nothing (apart from a modest inheritance).

After my Arctic experience, I journeyed to Africa, where I formulated my theories of business from studying the wild animals habitant on that continent. These secrets I am delighted to share with you in this chapter. For a fuller insight into my methods, however, it is imperative that the would-be plutocrat attend one of my residential courses, details of which are elucidated on page 22 of this volume. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you, and confirm that cash, bankers draft or jewellery are all acceptable methods of payment.

Rocky

BEING AN INSIGHT INTO THE MIND OF THE SUCCESSFUL MAN OF BUSINESS AND AN EXPLANATION OF ALL THAT I HAVE LEARNED IN MY TIME IN THE AFRICAN JUNGLE, AND HOW IT CAN BE APPLIED TO THE COMMERCIAL JUNGLE OF TODAY

I t was while hunting tigers in Africa that I originated my first and most fundamental technique for business accomplishment: Release the Tiger Withinand Shoot It in the Face. It is my firm belief that each and every one of usno matter how poor, weak, dull or Welshhas a successful man, or tiger, trapped inside him. Via correct thought, decisive action and strict adherence to my principles, this mighty beast can be released.

Upon unleashing the tiger within, you will wonder how you ever stumbled along among the wretched herbivores upon whom we tigers prey. For we tigers are of a quite different essence to the unsuccessful hoi polloi. We are decisive. We are ruthless. Many of us are solitary hunters. Some of us have retractable claws. In short, like the tiger, we are to be feared.

Fig. 1. Releasing the tiger while spanking the monkey. For advanced capitalists only.

Of course, I am speaking metaphorically here. Only the most exceptional and extraordinarily wealthy have an actual large cat of the species Panthera tigris living within their person. One thinks immediately of the first Baron Rothschild, who was so fearsomely tigerish in everything he did that he would climb a tree each morning, pounce on an unsuspecting bison, devour it alive, and then run to his offices in King William Street, sometimes pausing en route to lick his own hindquarters. If you eat a live bison each morning, you will not go far wrong in commerce; and it is my fervent hope that, in years to come, the streets of the City will be lined with wealthy Englishmen of commerce nibbling their own posteriors.

I am certain that the reader is now saying to himself: I should very much like to be a tigerbut how? The best and surest ways include:

REPEATING useful acronyms to yourself

THINKING positively about all you undertake

SHOUTING at your subordinates

PLAYING at golf with people richer than yourself

BEING BORN with an enormous fortune

Undertake some of these without delay, and your tiger will soon be released. If these fail, attend one of my reasonably priced INSTRUCTIONAL WORKSHOPS.

A note of caution. The successful man or tiger is a powerful creation and must be bent to your will, or else it will run riot through your entire existence, clawing the furniture, frightening the servants and making the keeping of deer in the grounds of your country seat quite impossible. In cases of an unruly inner tiger, you must shoot it with a blunderbuss and hang it on your wall.

Too often I see men release a tiger but fail to get it under control. Worse, we have seen financiers attempt to grab a tiger by the tail, precipitating commercial catastrophes from the South Sea Bubble to the fiasco in Brazil. One even hears reports of a CELTIC TIGER, a creature from across the Irish Sea that managed to get its paws on enormous sums of money in the form of loans from our more trusting neighbours on the Continent. The results, I need hardly add, were disastrous.

REMEMBER ALWAYS: the world of business in London is as dangerous and cut-throat as hunting animals in the jungle of Africa. Fortunately, London is less oppressively hot. The food, also, tends to be better, although one ought to avoid the Savoy on Mondays.

Fig. 2. Also to be avoided: Releasing your inner tiger in a bear market.

SCEPTICS who do not subscribe to my methodsa wretched collection of individuals who are universally poor and unsuccessful, I might addhave challenged the veracity of the origins of my RELEASE THE TIGER dictum, arguing on the basis that there are no tigers in Africa. I give them all the same answer: You are quite right. There are indeed no longer any tigers in Africa