You don't know what you're missing

Every year in March the real estate world converges on Cannes for the MIPIM fair, causing havoc for those of us too lowly and dispensable to attend. For an amateur hack like myself, whose deadlines remain engraved in stone, this often translates into seemingly endless fun on the telephone. A typical phone conversation might run something like this: "Hello, this is Alex Hayes calling from Eurobuild magazine. I'd like to interview your CEO, Joe Bloggs, regarding the 800m skyscraper your company is proposing to build in Radom?" "I'm sorry," comes the reply; "He's in Cannes." "What about," I ask, "the project manager, John Doe?" "Unfortunately he's away too," an overly-cheerful voice replies, before it tantalisingly adds: "But if you wish you could speak to Mrs Kowalska, the cleaning lady." AAAAAAARGH!It's not just me who enjoys all the frustrations with none of the benefits. Recently during a conference call, the two interviewees I wished to talk to were fashionably late in dialling in, l