Excerpt 4 - S.G. Warburg v Budd Hopkins - A Walk on the Wild Side

In the early 90s I’d quit my job at the Avon District Council, and thought I’d try my luck in ‘the city’. A boom in the corporate finance world led many well-known institutions to the heart of Bristol’s old 'Corn-Exchange' and city-centre. This was the place to find employment with a future.

I joined ‘Pallas’ the tech-leasing arm of S.G. Warburg & Co. and my few years with that firm remain memorable for a myriad of reasons. Experiencing what it was like to work for such a 'prestigious' company also had its pitfalls. Our senior manager was an ex-police sergeant which we all found quite amusing. He went from pushing people around to pushing paper.

Work was very boring, but we did have some great social events, especially at Christmas. The ‘big-wigs’ travelled down from London to mingle with us ‘small people’. Well, that was until an unfortunate lower-manager got caught snorting cocaine in the toilet, stumbling out, and falling unconscious into the foyer of the Marriott Hotel. Needless to say, all public company events were thus cancelled indefinitely.

There were ‘private’ functions that continued however, but I was never on that list. You had to be in the upper echelons for that, or wear very revealing clothes and be ‘up for it’ as one colleague put it. The thought of spending a weekend with an ex-policeman, the ageing CEO, and pals, at his isolated country mansion didn’t appeal to me anyway. I was an innocent from the ‘sticks’, and not yet ready for ‘promotion’.

After a year or so, things began to change. Our team brought in new clients, including one of Princess Diana’s purported lovers, international rugby-ace Will Carling. A lot of us got excited because his personal telephone number and address were now in our possession. We use to be big fans!

I also had my own sexual harassment to deal with, at the hands of my female boss, which caused an ill-advised lawsuit on my part. After I rejected her blatant, and rather shocking advance, she made my life a living hell at work. I was left with no choice but to depart. A friend and colleague at the time, Helen, referred me to a good barrister, and I lodged my complaint of ‘unbearable working conditions’.

What possessed me to sue a Warburgs company I still can’t fathom, but I do know that the Warburg name was kept quiet throughout. It was ‘Pallas’ that I was suing, although the document quotes 'S.G. Warburg & Co.'

I won nothing as I had to withdraw my case due to lack of funds, and stamina. I did achieve one thing. I held the record of the longest witness questioning ever for an industrial tribunal – seven hours! Legal aid doesn’t pay for employment disputes, so anyone in their right mind would have done the same eventually!

It was a very stressful time in my life, but was tinged with black humour. Warburgs decided to counter my claim (not enough physical proof) by saying that I slacked-off work several times to attend Greek weddings. (Of course, they weren’t being racist or anything, and people of Greek origin from the sticks, spend all their time at family weddings, right?)

Why was this counter-claim so hilarious? I didn’t bother to explain to the court where I was on the particular sick day in question, as the strange truth would have hurt my already floundering case.

I had never taken sick-days apart from one occasion. I had ‘pulled a sicky’ one Friday afternoon, to attend the Sheffield UFO Convention, at Sheffield University, where I had breakfast at a table next to Budd Hopkins and Linda Moulton-Howe. They talked about a lot of things, but very little of their own specialities away from the lecture hall. My illusions began to crack, as my interest in the subject waned. I realised that these people were not all they seemed to be.

That convention was one of the freakiest ufo events I’d ever experienced. There were a lot of high-profile ‘ufologists’ and ‘occultists’ on the speakers list. I remember some guy talking about spending a night in the Great Pyramid of Cheops, in Egypt. I don’t recall his name, but he was famous at the time for being a ‘psychic warrior’, and had published several books, and was very popular with the ladies.

I also remember that each time we came out of the lecture hall, to get a drink or whatever, we noticed two or three guys in suits, standing at the entrance, writing on clip-boards, monitoring the audience through the glass panel of the doors. They may have been counting numbers… or something else, we never knew.

What I did know was that, spending a long weekend hearing weird tales of ‘cattle mutilations in the mid-west’ and ‘day-light abductees in the Big Apple’ was a darn-sight more fun than writing up photocopier leasing contracts.

I’d also spent a weekend in London, at the Fortean Times Unconvention, but it was one of the most boring events, with little of interest. I remember obtaining the autograph of Colin Wilson after his talk on ghosts. He’d just written another book, and at the time we newbies had no idea of his calibre. Thinking back, it could have been at the Fortean event, although he was also at a ‘Ghost Hunters’ meeting in Bath. I may have confused the two. (My interests were many and varied!)

About a year later, I bumped into an old colleague at the train station, and he gave me kudos and told me how everyone at the company was talking about my brave move. Plus, my oversexed lesbian boss had been sacked! Little did he know that I was still quite a bimbo, and more concerned with having fun than with the ramifications of my failed lawsuit.

By now, my friend Helen was no longer my friend. I went through a period of embarrassment, as I had to find a way to explain to my new employers why I left Warburgs. Helen’s last words to me were… ‘You could always move to Australia’. Do they see Ufos in Australia? I know there are a lot of Greek weddings there.

…to be continued