Nachural’s founder Ninder Johal, a noted business director in his own right and passionate about business, careers for youth and entrepreneurship, led the celebrations with a most delightful talk on the dangers of imposing one’s own views and experiences on the dreams and ambitions of others. He vividly illustrated the point by introducing his daughter – who had pointedly ignored his admonitions against learning how to play a guitar by following lessons online – being seated beside him, quietly playing her guitar – and very well too.

We all celebrated Hope Against Cancer’s campaign, its focus being to beat the disease rather than managing its consequences. This is a very good cause, presented exceptionally well by Nigel Rose. We all donated to win a prize in their raffle.

The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Professor Nat Puri, a distinguished gentleman who built up the multi-million pound business Purico from nothing but a degree in mathematics, and who had us all laughing as he described the start of his journey. Truly wonderful to listen to, as he touched on eternal themes of care, dedication and humanity. As he says frequently, money is not the thing for which people respect you; you make a place by helping others.

The standout speech has to go to Luke Murfitt, a most courageous and honest man, who took on his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease as a challenge to do something useful before his faster ticking life clock prevents him from doing more. He now runs the justly named Integrity Cleaning company that employs people who were as unemployed as he once was, paying them and treating them better than most cleaning companies. The way a good company manager should. As a result, Luke’s courage, compassion – and good business dealing – has won his company many high value contracts. He is absolutely the perfect counterpoint to the amoral greed we all see from too many other businesses and their managers today.