Monthly arts and media column

Eleanor Margesson  |  Features
Date posted:  1 Aug 2010
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A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a Pampered Chef cooking show by one of the mums at my son’s school. I thought it would be an excellent chance to get to know some of the other mums, so off I went, determined to spend absolutely no more than a tenner.

The evening was run by a very experienced ‘consultant’ who was able to multitask extremely efficiently as she showed us the products, gave us fireproof reasons for buying £40 knives and cooked up a clever-but-simple delicious chicken and broccoli ring. I developed a variety of skills while I was there. The skill of saying ‘I don’t need that’, the skill of saying ‘Well, maybe that would be quite useful’, and then the skill of handing over my card details at the end of the evening.

Hosting a show

The host from that evening said a couple of days later at the school gate that she was thinking of starting up business as a consultant herself. She needed to book six shows as a start up and asked if I’d host one for her to help get her going. I’ve been looking for something that I could invite lots of people to but which would be nicely relaxing and non-threatening. I was really strongly against inviting people to my house just to spend money, so I made sure that it was OK to tell them that they didn’t need to bring their purses and we arranged the evening so that we would have lots of chat time over drinks and nibbles.

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