Wednesday, November 16th at the Oriental Club.
WGP celebrated the launch of their Health and Sport & Entertainment divisions with a star-studded event at the Oriental Club in Central London on Wednesday 16th November.
England’s legendary cricket captain David Gower OBE gave a speech while Arsenal and Spurs legends, Ian Wright, Ossie Ardiles, Ramon Vega, Dean Austin, and Paul Miller put aside their old club rivalries to help raise money for the children’s charity CHICKS.
For nearly two hundred years, the Oriental Club has been an iconic Central London focal point for those returning from around the world to conduct business and, as such, it has an assured place in history. Many extraordinary meetings have been held by characters who have been associated with the premises since the Duke of Wellington founded the Club and the WGP launch on November 16th was no exception.
After a brief introduction from David Orchard, which included some gentle heckling about his next speaker’s batting average, David Gower stood up to speak to attendees about the children’s charity CHICKS and the sterling work that is done in providing respite breaks to deprived inner-city children from around the UK. He spoke very eloquently about the difference these breaks made to the children, who are often carers for ailing relatives, lives and you could tell how much the event meant to him as he made time to attend despite having to get up at 1.30 am to commentate on England’s second test in India.
Tour de Force Wines, WGP’s wine distribution brand, donated two hundred bottles of high-quality wine that it supplies to Hakkasan and other Michelin starred restaurants, for sale at a heavily discounted price in aid of CHICKS and a substantial amount of money was raised throughout the night – for this, we would like to thank our generous guests.
After David Gower’s introduction, the night continued with entertaining speeches from John Miller, the EVP of WGP’s Sports & Entertainment division and Mark Basset, the VP of Health and Life Sciences. Both men gave a description of how their divisions’ function and John, a former professional footballer and genuine Fulham FC legend, told a particularly amusing story of one of his own wage negotiations from his playing days. Suffice to say, if he brings the same unarguable logic to the negotiating table for his clients we are all sure that they are in safe hands.
With the formal elements of proceedings out of the way, the guests were free to eat, drink, make merry and of course network with senior figures in both the health and sports worlds, as well as representatives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Much fun was had, much networking was done and much money was raised. We all look forward to more successful events like this and, of course, more business to be done together in 2019.
