One day in February 1982 I took a telephone call from my boss. It was typically brief. "Come up" was all he said. When I was facing him across his desk in his first-floor office opposite Buckingham Palace, Norman Payne, chairman of the British Airports Authority, warned me that tomorrow might not be a particularly restful day for the press office: Laker Airways was going bust.To the rather incongruous accompaniment of a military band which was playing in the street outside, Payne explained that Laker would be a major creditor of the BAA, owing many millions in airport landing and parking charges. "We may have to get the cherry-pickers out" he added, not without a certain relish, I thought.
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