A Tesco love-in at the Marketing Society retail forum came to an abrupt halt last week when a spy was spotted in the crowd. Carolyn Bradley, COO of Tesco.com, had just got on stage, blushing from marketing director Tim Mason's reference to her as one of the four most intelligent people he had ever worked for. He said one of the other four had already been on stage, which we presume was a reference to a Q&A session with Tesco chief Terry Leahy before lunch. Bradley confided to the marketeers: "I want to tell you a lot more about our future plans for Tesco.com, but Terry doesn't like it when I do that, and it seems that Sainsbury's has arrived." I was most curious about a battle bus parked outside Waitrose hq this week. It was the Waitrose Cooking Bus, usually found at schools as part of the RSA's Focus on Food campaign. The bus, I am told, is an "expandable pantechnicon". And inside there was a bunch of Waitrose directors. Why? Because it was directors' day when they get a chance to muck in and hone their cooking skills. So off trotted Tony Solomons, director of personnel; John Biggins, head of buying services; John Clarke, head of direct businesses; Richard Sadler, head of buying meat, poultry, fish and dairy; John Foley, head of buying fruit and veg; Bill Bishop, head of selling services; Bill Pratt, business marketing manager; Nicola Summerill, assistant business marketing manager; and Lisa Abbey, home economist. The result was an eclectic menu comprising minestrone soup; traditional white bread rolls; samosas; spring rolls; prawn toasts; Chinese and Indian salads; and banane celeste. {{COUNTERPOINT }}

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