Noël Wickland is a distinguished and widely travelled consultant with an extensive overseas media clientele. He modestly describes himself as 'A businessman ... an Englishman in his late fifties, not very sociable but interested in people, who has worked at various times in Malaya, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Holland and Belgium; and who speaks or has spoken, more or less badly, the languages of all but one of those countries'. To this he might have added having a comprehensive knowledge of good restaurants in most of the world's capitals; and an eclectic knowledge about what makes things tick.