Mannerisms

It was often said, though never validated, that Gillibrand had been in the press room of a company which Weinstock took over.

With his views on the irrelevance of PR, Weinstock is said to have immediately sacked all the company's press officers. Gillibrand, who was on holiday at the time, returned to find himself the one remaining PR in the company and, by then, Weinstock had decided he needed a PR.

Anyway, Gillibrand's tale relates to the take over of English Electric in 1967. EE had a computer business, and Weinstock was already known to have an antipathy to the computer business.

After a previous takeover of AEI, Weinstock had tried to sell AEI's computer business to Elliott Automation, but had been stopped when one of his executives told Weinstock he was crazy to consider the sale.

So after the EE takeover, the one question that was going to be on the lips of the press was what Weinstock intended to do with EE's computer business.

Weinstock told Gillibrand he wasn't going to attend the press conference announcing the EE takeover, and that Gillibrand would have to answer all the questions. It was a pretty appalling prospect for him..

Then, at the last moment, Weinstock turned up at the press conference.

Asked the inevitable question about what he was going to do about EE's computer business, Weinstock made a single, final statement and would say no more. He said:

"I'm going to do what's necessary."