Bleary-Eyed Drunks and Missed Meetings: Chemical Press Events Gone Wrong

There's something to be said for the quiet competence of technical communication, especially when you consider what can happen when things go spectacularly wrong. Here are a few tales from my decades of reporting on the chemical industry.

It's 1992 and I'm in Bradford, UK, for the press launch of the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) report into a fatal explosion and fire at Hickson and Welch.

The HSE chairman was just about to present the report’s main findings and recommendations to a big crowd of journalists when the back door flew open and a man holding a microphone burst in with a cameraman.

"You're live on Sky News," shouted the man with the mic.

Sky had only been active in the UK for a few years and really hadn't generated much interest or respect from the broader journalism fraternity.

So the whole room erupted into laughter and the Sky team slunk away.

More to Concrete Than Meets the Eye

Also in the 1990s, Kuwait oil firm Q8 was having a major launch in the UK. Journalists with interests as diverse as forecourt franchises and fractionation were rubbing shoulders at The Ritz hotel in London. In fact, the company had taken out the famous Marie Antoinette suite at the hotel for what was probably the most lavish press event I've ever attended in my nearly 36 years.

I managed to collar the only Q8 process engineer there and chat about what they hoped to do in terms of investment, technology and so forth. Suddenly, I was pushed hard from behind and nearly stumbled into the engineer.

The man who pushed me was very much the worse for wear and was at the event representing a concrete magazine. "There's more to concrete than meets the eye," he slurred, before falling into a fantastically comfortable armchair.

"There's more to concrete than meets the eye" became a catchphrase in the office after that for anyone who had over-indulged.

Much of our time outside the office was spent attending press events of one sort or another. Some of these would be held at company sites, while the annual results for major companies were often held in London.

In fact, I was at the last-ever ICI annual results in London, where the company spun off its pharmaceutical business, Zeneca.

Now and again, there were mix-ups, with events being moved or canceled without enough prior notice. It was a nuisance, but the most memorable of these was self-inflicted. It happened when BP invited the magazine to its annual results event taking place in Scotland.

We sent our journalist by plane, with the stipulation that he return with a wealth of interesting technology stories, as the trip was putting a significant dent in our annual travel budget.

On the expected results day, we received a phone call from the journalist, who was in a terrible state. Not only had he got the date of the annual results event wrong, but they were being launched in London, not Scotland!

He's still the only journalist I've ever known to turn up to a press conference both at the wrong time and in the wrong country.

To be fair to BP, they gave him a tour of the Grangemouth facility and he did return with some good editorial.

Run Over by a Royal

One of the stranger events I attended was the annual Royal Show at the National Agricultural and Exhibition Centre in a tiny village called Stoneleigh, about 20 minutes from Birmingham in the English Midlands. The event showcased livestock, machinery, farming innovations and countryside crafts to a wider audience and included competitions, trade stands, food and entertainment.

My editor at the time was friends with a chemical engineering professor who was an expert in aerosol dispersions and was demonstrating his latest invention at the show. My editor sent me to investigate. 

It turned out to be a novel nozzle that could replace the existing ones used on booms behind tractors for spraying fertilizer and other chemicals onto agricultural land. His technology minimized drift from the nozzles and achieved significantly greater ground coverage per liter of chemical used than traditional spray mechanisms.

We decided to visit a food stand for a chat after his technology demonstration and were walking along the edge of one of the tracks that crisscrossed the showgrounds when people started shouting at us to “look out” and “beware.” We both jumped back, narrowly missing being hit by a coach and four being driven by none other than Prince Philip, husband of the then Queen. He was late for a carriage racing event — one of his lifelong passions.

In an industry built on precision — where process engineers calculate tolerances to decimal places and safety protocols are written in excruciating detail — it's ironic how often the communication side of things descends into chaos.

Whether it's Sky News gate-crashing a health and safety briefing, magazine executives getting philosophical about concrete in their cups or journalists showing up on the wrong side of the border, these mishaps remind us that even in our buttoned-down sector, human error is the one variable you can always count on. At least BP got some decent editorial out of the confusion. The rest of us just got stories to dine out on for the next three decades.