Tell Sid, the advertising slogan for sales of shares in the newly privatised British Gas, was a Treasury in-joke.
‘Sid’ was Sidney Webb, one of the earliest members of the Fabian Society (& founder of LSE), who wrote the original Clause IV for the Labour Party which called for the nationalisation of the gas & water industries.Ian King Times Business Diary 22 November 2011
It is also either ironic or salutary to remember the fuss that was made about the pay of Cedric Brown when he got a 75% pay rise as Chief Executive of the by then privatised British Gas. I was always convinced that his name*, nowadays considered old fashioned & effeminate, only added to the contempt in which he was held during that media storm & fit of morality.
If only we had known how much more inflation there would be in the pay of senior managers.
* According to Wikipedia Cedric is a male given name invented by Walter Scott in the 1819 novel Ivanhoe, possibly misread for Cerdic, the name of a Saxon king, anglicized from Welsh caredig (‘beloved’).
