Winner hails win from mountain-top
This year's Achiever of the Year was so hard fought, the judges were forced to name four award-winners instead of the usual three.
The top spot went to web tycoon Luke Ashworth, founder and director of Fareham website-maker Netbasic, which was last year propelled to number three in The Times' Tech Track 100 with astounding growth figures.
In a bizarre acceptance speech, recorded on top of a mountain in France, Mr Ashworth thanked his entire team for his success at the awards.
He said: 'Good evening, and welcome to Meribel. Thank you very much for our achiever of the year award, but I think you'll all agree you can't be an achiever on your own, without the team there to back you up.'
He then presented a montage of his IT team skiing and pratfalling in the mountains of Meribel, where the team had been taken en masse on an annual company holiday.
In his place, Anne Hewitt, office administrator, collected the award from sponsor Denise Papadatos, manager of Robert Half International.
The next on the list was Alan Collins from newly-formed law firm Verisona.
The judges had remarked upon the powerful individual contribution he had made to the company, taking on and winning a string of difficult cases.
'We're living in very tough economic times,' he told BusinessWeek, 'and this event is a demonstration that there are great opportunities, great hope and great innovation, and people are still working really hard to build for the future.
'This demonstrates it's not all doom and gloom, there are still things happening, and I hope, in our own way, we're making a contribution to that.'
And by happy coincidence, the award's two highly-commended winners were well known to each other.
Simon Frost's socially responsible lending firm South Coast Moneyline had provided joint highly commended winner Ray Gough, proprietor of Tattoo Asylum, with some start-up funding for his tattoo business.
Mr Gough had overcome incredible hardship to start his own successful tattoo parlour, and Mr Frost has steered his company through another tough year of providing much-needed affordable loans to individuals.
Mr Gough said: 'These guys all look like proper businessmen – I just go to work!
'I want to go to work, but in my case I just had to start up my own business.'
Mr Frost said: 'I'm really pleased. I'm pleased for Ray, too.
'We help people out with start-up finances, and it's great to see that happening and being recognised.'
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