WHAT do you get if you put multi gold medal winning decathlete Daley Thompson, rugby league great Kevin Sinfield, World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore and pioneering Victorian mountaineer Edward Whymper into a hot air balloon together?
Well, a great charity night out for one, and secondly a fiercely competitive debate as the advocates of these sporting heroes attempt to use their verbal dexterity to keep them in the imaginary balloon basket when only one can stay there.
You don’t really know what to expect when you gather a quartet of sporting and media personalities and let them loose in front of an audience of business people.
Athletics great Steve Cram, rugby league favourite Jamie Jones-Buchanan, mountaineer Alan Hinkes and journalist and broadcaster Martin Kelner didn’t disappoint at the annual Yorkshire Lord’s Taverners Balloon Debate on Wednesday.
The Balloon Debate concept is quite simple if you’ve seen it work before.
It is based on the imaginary idea that four sporting heroes are in the basket of a hot air balloon which is thousands of feet in the air but losing height.
Only one of the four sports people can remain in the balloon basket if it is to reach the ground safely.
The four speakers try to persuade the audience to keep their sporting hero in the balloon over a series of three rounds until a winner is declared.
Never mind the sporting heroes, all of the speakers at the Queens Hotel in Leeds boasted serious pedigrees too.
Steve Cram CBE is recognised as one of the finest athletes of his generation. He is a World, Olympic, European and Commonwealth medalist as well as three-time World Record holder during his illustrious athletics career.
He is now the Chief Athletics commentator for the BBC where he has co-presented the last three Summer Olympic Games.
Alan Hinkes OBE is the only Briton to climb the world’s highest mountains – the fourteen 8,000m peaks. These are the most dangerous mountains on the planet.
In his book ‘8000m Climbing the World’s Highest Mountains’, he relates these epic ascents through his down-to-earth accounts and remarkable photographs.
I don’t know what he thought when I pointed out to the audience that he is also remembered for having to abandon his ascent of a Himalayan mountain after he sneezed on the flour on a chapati and slipped a disc.
Jamie Jones-Buchanan plays for Super League Champions Leeds Rhinos.
He is one of the rugby league club’s longest serving and most popular players and has won four Super League championships with the club and been selected to play for both England and Great Britain.
JJB has progressed through the Rhinos Academy system and gone on to win every honour in the game.
Jamie makes his stage debut next month in a new play called ‘Leeds Lads’ about the city’s inspiring role in the Battle of the Somme, the centenary of which is commemorated this year.
Martin Kelner is a journalist, radio DJ, TV presenter, podcaster and author.
He’s been a regular guest on Five Live’s Fighting Talk show and wrote the Screen Break weekly column for The Guardian.
His first book, about the outer suburbs of show business, was called When Will I Be Famous?. His second book, Sit Down and Cheer, looked at the history of sport on British television.
Martin Kelner was first up to speak and talked the audience through the achievements of the late Bobby Moore, the only English football captain to hold the World Cup aloft.
Jamie Jones-Buchanan was next on stage and introduced himself to the audience as a Leeds lad from the Big Apple – Bramley.
His hero was his close friend and former team mate at the Leeds Rhinos, Kevin Sinfield.
Then Steve Cram told the audience that he wanted them to vote to keep Daley Thompson in the balloon.
He said that he and Daley were once sharing a drink in a hotel bar after an Olympic Games when decathlete Daley introduced himself to a couple of women talking to Cram by saying: “You don’t want to bother talking to him, he can only go for four minutes, I can last for two days.”
Alan Hinkes was the final speaker and didn’t reveal his hero until the end of his six minute slot, so holding back his stories about Edward Whymper, the first man to conquer the Matterhorn, until later.
It was a bold but ultimately fruitless gamble as Alan was voted out after the first round.
He was followed by Martin Kelner, who had gambled on the audience being full of Brexiteers by appealing to the fact that Bobby Moore had led us to victory over the Germans in 1966.
He perhaps didn’t get the vote of William Ballmann, a German-born lawyer who is a partner at Gateley in Leeds.
So finally Steve Cram and Jamie Jones-Buchanan went head to head in the final with just two minutes each to convince the audience to vote for their hero.
JJB ended on a crescendo, tearing his shirt open to reveal a rugby shirt his hero Kevin Sinfield had given him.
I mentioned that if any women in the room were thinking of leaving early then I was going to do that in the bar after the event.
That caused a frisson of excitement, but many chose not to show it outwardly.
Steve Cram implored the audience to vote for Daley by saying how could you not be impressed by a man who could run almost as fast as Linford Christie, through a javelin almost as long as Steve Backley and do the long jump almost as far as Greg Rutherford.
And, with a flourish, he also said that Daley’s son went to university in Leeds.
It won Steve the Balloon Debate by the slightest of margins over Jamie, there were barely a dozen votes in it out of an audience of over 200.
Great entertainment at the eve of Test Match dinner at the Queens Hotel raised thousands for the fantastic work of the Lord’s Taverners, the UK’s leading youth cricket and disability sports charity dedicated to giving disadvantaged and disabled young people a sporting chance.
Now the challenge is to fine speakers that are as good for next year.
Bring it on. As they say in hot air balloons.
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Several people came up to me at the Balloon Debate and told me they enjoy reading this blog every Friday.
It is always nice to get compliments, but however many bouquets you receive, they only help salve the bruises from the brickbats.
Last week’s blog was returned with a terse response from one gentlemen.
“Stop sending me this crap,” he instructed.
It is probably what most readers think, but fortunately are too polite to say.
A brief investigation showed that he runs an online marketing business which helps manage reputations and also does public relations.
I think it must be quite a new venture, because the last time I read about the individual behind the business, he was attempting to make his fortune by launching an online business attempting to persuade men to sign up to pay a fee to receive a pair of black socks every month.
I assume it didn’t work. I for one didn’t sign up because I prefer beige socks with my open-toed sandals.
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I HOSTED another one of KPMG’s superb Enterprise Masterclasses at its Leeds office this week.
They described me as a facilitator, which I liked because it made me sound like I was qualified to do a lot more than trying to read out some words in the right order and press a button on a remote control to conduct an interactive survey.
The subject was risk and the keynote speaker boasted some CV.
Ellis Watson spent the first 10 years of his career working with Rupert Murdoch at News International, going on to run Mirror Group Newspapers where he had to sack Piers Morgan as editor of the Daily Mirror just weeks before Morgan was due to be best man at his wedding.
He went on to John Menzies, ran the iconic Greyhound bus business in the USA for First Group and headed up Celador TV when it was making and selling Who Wants To Be A Millionaire all over the world.
His last job was running Simon Cowell’s Syco corporation globally and he now heads up family-owned Scottish media group DC Thomson.
He told us that after becoming Rupert Murdoch’s youngest director, he worked with newspaper names such as Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, two former editors of The Sun newspaper both accused of phone hacking. Brooks was eventually cleared while Coulson was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Ellis Watson said that he was still friends with both of them and told the audience:
“You should see my wedding video, it looks more like an episode of Crimewatch.”
Have a great weekend.