CHANNEL TALK - PCSQUEALER

Night of a thousand Vars

It was a Tuesday just like any other. But in the heart of London, at the poshest hotel in the land, the glitterati came out to play on a night that was truly sprinkled in stardust. In another part of the fashionable city, however, the PC Dealer Channel Awards were being held at The London Hilton and you would not believe the shannakins those naughty sales types got up to.

So here, because we love you, is the PC Squealer alternative awards for the night of a thousand drunken exploits.

Immature ejaculation

The prize for the company that made the biggest impact on the evening must surely go to the channel's favourite distributor Landis and its newly shorn managing director Roger Paul. Landis must have expected to win as it was ordering enough champagne to get the whole of the PC Squealer news team drunk - and that's takes an awful lot. Anyway, although the distributor didn't win either of the two awards it was nominated for, its staff were determined to have a good time whatever and so decided to sing 'Happy birthday' to themselves for launching Landis in the UK one year ago, right slap bang in the middle of the award ceremony. Some would say this kind of behaviour was immature and highly uncouth, but we would say hush your mouths. And then, like the bunch of Pavarottis they all are, the staff also took to singing rude songs when Computer 2000 picked up the much coveted networking distributor of the year award. What good sports. Best of all though was when all the other networking distributors went over to C2000's general manager of networking, Steve Lockie, to congratulate him and the gracious Roger threw all the toys out of his pram by declining to wish him the best. Isn't it nice that people take these awards so seriously?

Oi! No trainers and no journalists

If PC Squealer could make up our own awards, we would invent one for the most anally retentive person of the evening and we'd give it to the doorman who was standing guard at Computer 2000's pre-dinner drinks party.

Now, your hosts for the evening had been invited to this little soiree and looked forward to meeting up with all the chappies at the distributor.

But we'd forgotten our invite. So although we were actually organising the event, Mr Jobsworth doorman wouldn't let us in no matter how many time we assured him we weren't carrying bombs or were attempting to assassinate C2000 managing director Graham Watt. The doorman must have thought he was guarding royalty - believe us, love, nothing could be further from the truth.

Pantalunacy

While there were a few doorman loitering around on awards night, PC Squealer didn't notice any fashion police, which is a shame because they would have made some heavy duty arrests. Which brings us to the award for the most fashionably challenged person of the evening. There were quite a few patriotic chappies around who thought it would be a lovely touch to wear a kilt. And very nice they looked too. So what on earth was going on with Ingram Micro's managing director, Sandy Scott, who turned up in possibly the most unbecoming trousers PC Squealer has ever seen. It's hard to actually describe the pants in question, but somebody told PC Squealer that Sandy had bought the trousers from Poundstretcher, which must surely be a lie. We'd suggest that Sandy should just stick to wearing a kilt, but then we'd have to see his legs.

High street favourite

Our award for the most loved company of the evening went to retailer to the stars, Dixons. PC Squealer was astounded to hear the pure, unadulterated hate directed at the retail giant through a crescendo of booing. Whoever it was, it can't have come from all those small independent retailers who think Dixons is simply the bees knees.

Way over the eight

This will probably not strike anyone as a massive surprise, but most of the people who attended the Channel Awards got rip-roaringly drunk and PC Squealer has photographic evidence of those who took it all a bit too far. So the one drink and they're anybody's award actually goes to two people. The chap pictured on the right spent most of the night in a drunken doze without realising he provided much of the evening's entertainment. While people rested their drinks on his head, tickled his ears and generally tried to make friends with him, he remained blissfully unaware of what was going on. The chap on the left, on the other hand, who we understand works in sales at Ilion, was the centre of attention before he fell into the land of nod. Not only did he try to start a fight with one of our lovely reporters, he also wolf-whistled in the face of another PC Squealer journalist and was promptly told to %&$! off. Best of all though was when he rugby tackled his boss - the Peter Pan of distribution himself Wayne Channon - and then proceeded to wriggle round on the floor with him. We know things are looking dark at Ilion at the moment but there must be better ways of trying to get a promotion.

Handbags at dawn

There is a commonly held belief that women are bigger bitches than men.

Well, after one night in the company of a load of channel chappies, PC Squealer can safely say this is a load of old rubbish. According to one little dicky bird, Datrontech group commercial director, Allan Mack, went over to Ilion's table to commiserate with his old employer on not winning the award for networking distributor of the year. We hear that Allan said: 'I'm not surprised you didn't win the award,' to which one of the Ilion chaps replied: 'Yeah, all thanks to you, you w****r.' Another source heard a conversation between two very large broadline distributors, which went something along the lines that one of the chaps couldn't believe that the other company's results were so good and asked if it was fiddling the books, to which the other chap retorted: 'You've got enough problems of your own pal, keep your eye on those.' Meow.

Turning Japanese

The Channel Awards often has strange effects on people - such as making their hands stick to walls.

One poor chap wanted to traverse the corridor outside one of the many refreshment centres where strong herbalised tea was served long into the night. Finding that he could only make the journey by crawling slowly along the walls, he started out. But there was one problem - the lifts lay between him and his chosen spot. When he got to the lift doors, they opened to reveal a family of Japanese tourists, who dragged the bewildered reveller into the lift, which then ascended to the 25th floor. He never returned.