“Never try to defend the indefensible.”
Fiona Bellairs
Give your career history in 25 words or fewer.
Telesales, Total Distributor, Field Sales, Fina Distributor, Regional Sales Manager, Butler Fuels, Business Development – Logistics, Supply Manager, Sales Director
Describe yourself in 3 words.
Feisty. Fun-loving. Loyal.
What were your childhood / early ambitions?
To mirror my father in obtaining the gold Duke of Edinburgh award.
Describe your dream job (if you weren’t doing this?)
Working on quarantine at an Australian airport, uncovering all the undeclared food where people have said ‘no food’ on their passenger card.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
Never try to defend the indefensible, and always put it right before it collapses.
Share your top tips for business success.
Learn when to say no and when to seize the opportunity.
What’s your most recent business achievement of note?
Having our company be nominated for, and win, the UKIFDA Innovation Award and being personally recognised by the nominees for how I work with them.
Tell us your greatest fear
Being buried alive.
Which is most important – ambition or talent?
Ambition.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Providing a solution that gives a great ROI to the distributor. It’s not about the hardware, it’s how you use the data.
Which is the quality that you most admire?
Empathy and integrity.
What are you most likely to say?
Absolutely – let’s give it a go.
What are you least likely to say?
No.
Describe your perfect day
Water bungalows out in the Indian Ocean; an early morning swim, long lazy lunch in the sun and watching the sun go down on another day with a gin cocktail.
Do you have a favourite sports team?
Leicester Tigers.
What’s the biggest challenge of our time?
The obvious one is climate change, but also not letting our future generations become totally dependent on social media for interaction with peers, siblings and business colleagues.
Cheese or chocolate?
Cheese – the stronger the better – my favourite being Morbier which is made from the morning milking with a layer of ash and then the evening milking on top.
Share your greatest personal achievement.
Completing the Moonlight Marathon Walk for Breast Cancer in London, in a decorated bra, and raising over £2k in sponsorship.
What’s your pet hate or biggest irritant?
Where do I start?… People who eat with their mouths open and people who talk on their mobile phones whilst at a checkout – just rude to the checkout person and those around them.
If you were on ‘Mastermind’ what would your specialist subject be?
Friends or Only Fools and Horses (it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen them, I just love them).
If you were elected to government, what would be the first law you’d press for?
Means test the winter fuel payments to ensure that our most vulnerable pensioners living in fuel poverty benefit from a sizeable payment rather than sending to everyone over a certain age – let’s face it, Mick Jagger and Sir Paul McCartney don’t need it.
If your 20-year-old self saw you now what would they think?
Cut yourself a bit of slack – you are way too hard on yourself sometimes – and know that you are appreciated.
What is number 1 on your bucket list?
Fiji and Bora Bora.
What 3 things would you take to a desert island?
My beautiful old German Shepherd, a radio, and a truck load of champers.
Tell us something about you that people would be very surprised by.
I started life as a WPC (as female police officers were known then) with a handbag and having to wear a skirt and tights – scaling fences in pursuit was always interesting, and it was easier to throw the handbag at the back of an escaping offender than to try and bring them down with a so-called truncheon.
Who would you most like to ask these questions of?
Dame Maggie Smith or Dame Judi Dench.
Photo supplied by Fiona Bellairs
