They call Daniel Kretinsky the ‘Czech Sphinx’ but the nickname doesn’t do him justice. Sphinxes – certainly the one in Egypt – do not gesticulate or jabber as much as Comrade Kretinsky.
What a box of tricks he was at the Commons trade committee. The Brno-born billionaire as good as lifted his heels and kicked up a polka. His hands flew. He leaned from side to side like Barry Sheene taking corners at Brands Hatch.
He pinched finger and thumb tips together so much, he could have been a mittel European foodie describing the stickiest trdelnik or a garlicky cesnecka.
The MPs, who had come to give this foreigner a good biffing, did not entirely know how to deal with him. They did their best to prong him over Royal Mail’s failures and demanded he apologise (Westminster has a fetish for apologies). They even accused him of lying. Mr Kretinsky barely noticed. He was too busy unleashing his next flurry.
Things started with committee chairman Liam Byrne (Lab) going in hard on late letters. The sphinx: ‘I am a numbers person.’ Those numbers allegedly did not show things had worsened since he bought Royal Mail for £3.6 billion just over a year ago.
His English accent was a little chewy and when Mr Byrne said ‘let me make sure I’ve understood you,’ his fellow MPs nodded readily. Some 220 million letters were late last year. That was hardly good, was it?
Mr Kretinsky rattled off statistics to bolster his case. ‘Just a few numbers,’ he cried, wobbling his tall, rectangular head. And yet he accepted that the service was ‘not where we want it to be’. The same could be said for all those letters, mate.
Parliamentarians are more accustomed to business owners who grovel. Mr Kretinsky seemed to base his style on a Gloucestershire Jack Russell I once knew, name of Charlie, who would give furious chase to postal vans and try to bite their tyres. Charlie had fight and somehow always avoided being squashed.
Mr Kretinsky argued that no other postal service in Europe was obliged to deliver letters as promptly – as, er, cheaply – as ours. The Italians paid five Euros for a first-class letter. This scandalised Mr Byrne’s patriotism. ‘Mr Kretinsky, we don’t want to be judged against Italy!’ he gasped. A Lady Bracknell moment. The sleek-suited boffin was soon touching his heart with both hands, pulling expressions of intense emotion, interrupting his interrogators and invoking their sense of fair play.
‘Ees a hard job,’ he said. Delivering a letter from Brighton to Scotland the next day for £1.70 was devilish difficult.
Mr Byrne, mercilessly: ‘You shoulda known that when you bought the service.’
‘Ees very normal zat zumfink will not be perfect,’ shrugged the sphinx. ‘This is a difficulty of our destiny in this job. One thing you can never avoid is there will be a mistake. I know that this is our destiny.’ The MPs blinked a bit.
Parliamentary hearings are not accustomed to such operatic concepts as destiny. They are more used to boring replies about ‘strategies going forward’.
‘I believe you’re a billionaire,’ said Sarah Edwards (Lab, Tamworth). The sphinx assented. Ms Edwards: ‘Coo, I’ve never met a billionaire.’ A Lib Dem accused him of being ‘a capitalist’. Is that a sin nowadays in Lib Dem circles? When Mr Kretinsky talked about his finances, the sums gushed out at such a rate, it was as if someone had struck oil.
He averred that he was not in the postal business for money. Merely for the challenge. Oh come off it. And yet I found him fascinating. Peter Sellers would have played him brilliantly.
After a denial of any plot to delay letters in favour of parcels, Mr Byrne told him tersely, ‘we’re not in a position to believe you’ and threatened to put him on oath next time.
Despite such barbs, the sphinx survived. Unlike the one in Giza he certainly didn’t lose his nose.
