WHY BICK’S CHILEAN MINOR HAS X APPEAL
CHARLIE Bick, the teenage son of Square1 Consulting’s chairman David Bick, looks set to follow in the footsteps of fellow Old Harrovian James Blunt, as his appearances on the Chilean X Factor are winning him an army of female fans.
Charlie, 19, entered Chile’s first X Factor contest after his host family in Santiago – where he is learning Spanish before he goes to Manchester University to study in the autumn – heard the former choirboy singing around the house.
The low point in the contest was a rendition of a Robbie Williams song that was so flat the judges turned the backing music off, but Bick soon pulled things back by “bowling over” the attractive blonde X Factor judge by singing a Julio Iglesias number – in Spanish.
From there, he stormed through the Boot Camp and Judges Houses stages, and is now one of the final 12 acts in the competition as part of a three-piece band called Aduana with Paulina and Camila from Chile, with 5,000 – and counting – female friends on Facebook.
However, the attention hasn’t gone to the singer’s head, according to his proud father, speaking to The Capitalist ahead of Charlie’s second televised performance on Chilean network TVN tonight.
Bick senior added: “We have no idea where his musical talent comes from. Because if I sing, I make glass break.”
COST CUTTERS
WHO has been behind the dramatic transformation of Carphone Warehouse over the last two years?
Not the firm’s founder and chief executive Charles Dunstone, says the Management Consultancies Association, but – you’ve guessed it – management consultancy Boxwood, which was rewarded for saving the mobile phone retailer £90m of costs with the overall prize at the MCA’s annual awards last Thursday.
“This sort of skilled work will play a central role in helping the UK build its economic recovery,” the MCA’s chief executive Alan Leaman told his 600 guests at the Lancaster London Hotel.
Other star achievers at the awards included Olivier Fusil from Accenture, named as Change Management Consultant of the Year and Melinda McKinley from Deloitte (pictured left), named as Performance Improvement Consultant of the Year, who were among the six individual winners to collect awards on the night.