Many think that management consultants are a bit 'fluffy', prone to jargon, and basically unhelpful to the businesses they're hired to help.

Multiply their so-called 'fluffiness' with that of a management training course - and we're talking very fluffy indeed.

But Ernst & Young's consultants and advisers are not fluffy, nor is the new-wave training they undertake, insists head of advisory Steve Varley.

To create the next generation of advisers, E&Y sends them out on a five-day course to a country house in Milton Keynes, where they are given no agenda at all. No start time or finish. Nothing. Nada.

They are handed some materials to work with and 'mock clients'. It's up to them to work out what the clients want and how to give it to them. Apparently this allows them to think on their feet, and absorb E&Y's culture.

Fluffy or not, TS couldn't think of anything else but Frank Spencer on his ill-fated PR course. TS is sure he went to a different country house for that ill-fated sojourn.