Insider Media Limited

All White on the night

To the Network NG annual awards dinner, where the thrusting "young" business types of tomorrow get drunk and make fools of themselves all in the name of CPD. And what a night for Blusource's business development dynamo Alice White, who walked off with the gong for the Biggest Clanger of the Year.

Apparently, on her first week at Blusource, Alice celebrated her new job at a boozy work function, had a couple too many and managed to lose both her brand new company mobile phone and the set of office keys she'd been entrusted with. We've all done it, Alice. Just not all at once.

TV winner

You might have recognised a familiar face on television last night as Derby construction company boss Ian Hodgkinson played a key role in the most challenging project ever undertaken by the team working on the popular BBC television makeover series ‘DIY SOS’ - the major refurbishment of a crumbling children's centre in Liverpool.

The programme part of the nationwide campaign to support deserving causes on 'Children in Need' day.

Ian, the managing director of Pride Park-based Hodgkinson Builders, spent three days working with Nick Knowles and the DIY SOS team on the Norris Green Youth Centre in Liverpool.

As well as having a hands-on role in the makeover, Ian also sourced the tradesmen to help the regular DIY SOS team with a major refurbishment of the building. A BBC spokesman described the project as "the biggest ever build tackled by the team".

Cash from Children in Need already supports the Norris Green project which provides activities for youngsters who, said the BBC spokesman, "have few other options".

Ian, is no stranger to the world of TV makeover programmes. In the past few years, he has featured in Conversion, Sixty Minute Makeover, Celebrity DIY, Homes Under the Hammer, Home Front in the Garden, Moving On and the Discovery Channel.

Getting shirty

Back to the Network NG event, and committee member Greg Simpson was good enough to help us out with some replacement cufflinks, after one of our team had, as usual, forgotten his. Greg was ten minutes late turning up after he had turned his house upside down trying to find some spare cufflinks. But thank god he did, because nothing looks finer than on a shirt than a pair of ‘links depicting what we thought was an amputee, but, in fact was a stick man about to kick a football. Cheers, Greg.