Fermata
May 8th, 2020, 08:43 PM
You may have heard of Lloyds of London, an insurance centre in London where fortines came be made or lost. Many years ago I was allowed to visit and went to see a number of underwriters, one of which was Ian Posgate, a man who had the nickname of Goldfinger, a larger than life charactor but very successful. He was one of the highest paid people in the country.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2017/07/12/ian-posgate-controversial-lloyds-underwriter-obituary/
I cannot recall the year but my measure of time is that I had a new Parker 61, so it may have been when Dunhill owned MB, I recall seeing a MB Diplomat in a shop window before going into the Old Lloyds building at £125, which was around 4X the price of a good Parker.
£125 was a typical weekly wage at the time for a young City worker, a new 149 is also in the same 2020 proportion.
On my tour I was given strict instructions not to speak unless spoken to and to be reverential to all but especially to Goldfinger who was known to not suffer fools gladly. I was invited to sit at his desk and noticed that his MB was enormous, I should not have spoken but he saw me looking at the pen and he said, 'It's huge isn't, I complained to MB that I wanted a pen that I only needed to fill once a day and they made this for me'. The implication was that it was a one off, perhaps a longer rather than fatter.
I can imagine that he did use a lot of ink, he took all his own notes and recorded everything that he was told when brokers came to place risks, being the character that he was the idea that he should have two pens rather than one in XL would not have been acceptable, his thinking would have been if you earn millions then you call the shots.
The conversation has stayed with me, it was a major reason why I wanted a 149. Commercially for MB it would have been good product placement for a high profile high earning man to be using an MB product, especially if Dunhill was in the driving seat, technically I suspect that it was possible for MB to produce a pen that had another 1ml or so of capacity but there is the nagging doubt in my mind that Posgate was just pulling my leg.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2017/07/12/ian-posgate-controversial-lloyds-underwriter-obituary/
I cannot recall the year but my measure of time is that I had a new Parker 61, so it may have been when Dunhill owned MB, I recall seeing a MB Diplomat in a shop window before going into the Old Lloyds building at £125, which was around 4X the price of a good Parker.
£125 was a typical weekly wage at the time for a young City worker, a new 149 is also in the same 2020 proportion.
On my tour I was given strict instructions not to speak unless spoken to and to be reverential to all but especially to Goldfinger who was known to not suffer fools gladly. I was invited to sit at his desk and noticed that his MB was enormous, I should not have spoken but he saw me looking at the pen and he said, 'It's huge isn't, I complained to MB that I wanted a pen that I only needed to fill once a day and they made this for me'. The implication was that it was a one off, perhaps a longer rather than fatter.
I can imagine that he did use a lot of ink, he took all his own notes and recorded everything that he was told when brokers came to place risks, being the character that he was the idea that he should have two pens rather than one in XL would not have been acceptable, his thinking would have been if you earn millions then you call the shots.
The conversation has stayed with me, it was a major reason why I wanted a 149. Commercially for MB it would have been good product placement for a high profile high earning man to be using an MB product, especially if Dunhill was in the driving seat, technically I suspect that it was possible for MB to produce a pen that had another 1ml or so of capacity but there is the nagging doubt in my mind that Posgate was just pulling my leg.