‘He is on a diet, is a high insurance risk, fears a thrombosis, is resigned to his first ulcer. He has reached the point where he can’t tell one plastic meal from the next. When he sees his children they hardly recognise him. He hasn’t even had the pleasure of being adulterous – he has no energy for sex.’ In June 1971, a cartoon strip ‘The Awful Secret of George Jetseller’ introduced the Observer’s look at the plight of a new breed of globetrotting executive.
A growing number of multinational companies whose business needs included ‘short, fire-fighting trips’, the explosion in air travel and the borderless convenience of Amex and Diners Club cards had all led to the emergence of an itinerant executive class: Singer Sewing Machine’s European execs clocked up 2,750,000 miles of business travel a year; Unilever spent half a million on travel in 1969. A rapidly homogenising international ‘business culture’ made the jet-set life simpler, as did the ubiquity of a handful of travel essentials: ‘The English language, Scotch whisky and the Hertz Rent-a-Car.’
