How to get promoted to the board

The idea of middle-aged executives desperately hanging out with the kids and dropping “mad flavas” is frankly an appalling one, after all the Diary doesn’t want people muscling in on its territory.

But this is the world of advertising, and one has to accept that the industry does feature a large number of portly, old-enough-to-know-better gentlemen prancing around in shoes with velcro instead of laces and tight, faded Razorlight t-shirts.

But amid this wreckage you can find one Warwick Cairns, planning director at brand agency Brandhouse WTS and skateboarder (or for those of you on an Avril Lavigne “tip” – he’s a “sk8er boi”).

Having been “down” with skating since its birth several decades ago, Warwick is loathe to give up his favourite sport – a bit like Ray Illingworth in the 1980s.

So, every lunchtime he sneaks off to the skate park under the A40 flyover, dons his kneepads, helmet etc – because safety matters, dude – and indulges in an hour of serious skating tricks.

Oddly he is not alone. And playing the rest of the Jackass crew to Warwick’s Johnny Knoxville is a whole bunch of middle-aged executives who congregate for brainstorming and creative sessions on the ramps and pipes of the skate park.

The Diary believes it may have stumbled across a strange new subculture and looks forward to more updates from the gnarly underbelly of the advertising (skate)board room.