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Barnett Waddingham Christmas Party 1999
Barnett Waddingham goes back to Chelsea
For the second time in three years, the BW Christmas party was held at Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea FC. Around 150 staff from all the offices converged in London for the event. With people travelling from so far afield it has become customary to start the party at lunchtime so that the journey home can be made at a reasonable hour in the evening.
After some preliminaries lunch was served at around 1.30 and it was not long before everybody was getting into the party spirit.
Entertainments
During the afternoon it is customary for each office to put on some sort of entertainment for the rest of the firm. The form of the entertainment is limited only by the imagination of those writing the scripts, although the primary aim is to make sure that the partners suffer maximum embarrassment. This year saw a wide variety of successful acts.
On the musical side, the Spice Lads (from the London pensions actuarial and administration teams) made their third consecutive appearance at a Christmas party with a brand new song, which was similar to all the others. The Amersham office provided two musical acts with The SSAS Pistols (from the SSAS team unsurprisingly) featuring in particular their classic hit "Actuary in the UK" and Saps (administration team) with their song "Actuaries" set to the tune of "Tragedy" by Steps (surely you mean the Bee Gees? - ed).
There were also some short sketches. The Leeds office gave us a preview of the new Barnett Waddingham digital TV channel, BWC TV, by giving us a short taste of 4 of the programmes we can expect to see. Some of the new actuarial recruits at London starred in a sketch called The Sham Witch Project (AmerSHAM - geddit?), all about the trials of getting from London out to deepest Buckinghamshire. Finally the Cheltenham office treated us to the Barnett Waddingham World Twister Wrestling Championships where four partners were invited (but not allowed to refuse) to take the stage to play a game of Twister. Huw "Big Daddy" Wynne-Griffith triumphed.
The evening
After all the excitement in the afternoon everybody was ready to let off a bit of steam when the disco started and many of the senior members of the partnership were seen to be strutting their stuff. Only some of younger ones were still going by the time the disco finished at 11.
It was also good to see some old friends again including Rodney Barnett (the "B" in BWC) who is still a regular attendee at the party; former Senior Partner Raymond Hayward and his wife; retired partner Jillian Evans and two of our longest serving staff who both retired a couple of years ago - Miss Tallboy and Hazel Braunton.
So as usual it was a very successful event, enjoyed by all.
Barnett Waddingham, January 2000.