Once he flew to Saudi Arabia without a visa expecting an agent to arrange for it to be waiting for him at Jeddah airport.
It was not, he was refused entry and marched by a guard with a rifle to room where he had to sleep on the table.
“In the morning Jones indicated he wanted to go to the bathroom. The guard pointed the way and showed him the right cubicle. When he re-emerged into the corridor the guard indicated he wanted to do the same and handed the astonished Jones his rifle.
“Jones looked at the rifle and realised it was cocked and ready to fire. He momentarily contemplated his options, but creating mayhem was unlikely to be helpful to his career.”
Phil Lough was told at the Dairy Board’s Christmas drinks party in 1975 that he would be going to Beirut in the new year to establish its new Middle Eastern office. But during a stopover in Singapore he and his wife saw on television that a civil war had erupted in Lebanon.
“Plan B, after 10 days in Singapore was to open a regional office in Tehran instead. Lough simply made the decision and told Wellington what he was doing; they said that was fine.
“Lough’s first office was a hole-in-the-wall room with an agent the board had used in the past. There was no air-conditioning and on one occasion he passed out from heat exhaustion.”
The board’s marketing manager John Parker, who introduced Lada cars to NZ roads in exchange for dairy products, knew he was being followed when he visited Russia four or five times a year.
“Hotel rooms were regularly searched. He developed a habit of writing himself instructions from his masters before he left NZ about his price limits, volume restraints and other details, in the hope that officials searching his room would read them.”
In 1992 chief executive Murray Gough and Dairy Board deputy chairman Peter Jensen flew at short notice from London to Geneva.
“They had been asked to return to the GATT headquarters to comment on the implications of draft Uruguay Round proposal for restricting export subsidies – an issue of vital interest to NZ.
“With hotels overbooked, the two men settled for a less than comfortable night in a double bed in Geneva’s last remaining room.”
