FRENCHcharmer Georges Sampeur, who has just left Avis after 23 years, got a fine Gallic send-off from his staff.
In the great tradition of British humour – well, er, the great ‘Allo ‘Allo tradition, anyway – 10 of the UK managing director’s closest colleagues wore moustaches, berets and strings of onions to his leaving dinner.
The group, which included Avis bigwigs Dale Morley, Sacha Cooper, Ian Jarvis and Alex Jackson, even took along a bicycle to the gathering at the famous French Horn restaurant in Sonning, Berkshire.
Meanwhile, at a leaving party for around 100 staff, Sampeur was treated to a This Is Your Life retrospective of his Avis years, which began when he ran errands at a French car-rental outlet at the age of 17.
But an Avis insider admitted it had been hard to get much dirt on Sampeur. The most embarrassing story involved him scraping the door of an Avis Mercedes on his first day as managing director at Avis UK. The rest was all about him playing the flute and enjoying a good game of tennis.
“Georges is an exceptionally nice guy,” our source said apologetically. “We tried to dig around for things to embarrass him, but everybody thinks so highly of him.”
How disappointing!