I picked up Thursday’s Guardian with mounting anticipation and turned to page 9, as instructed. There it was, half a page of sheer, undiluted schadenfreude!
A half-page ad in which Michael O’Leary is forced to apologise fulsomely for calling his EasyJet rival Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannu a liar in print. Appearing in the Telegraph, too. And all paid for by Ryanair.
That’s the sadness of the Ryanair brand. For all the gritty enterprise that has made it Europe’s first airline, we don’t very much like it, or its leader. In fact, we can’t wait for him, or it, to get their come-uppance.
Not that O’Leary will be losing much sleep over such sentiment (see my Horlicks post). If anyone thinks this is his Gerald Ratner moment, they are very much mistaken. O’Leary’s arrogance is not yet so overbearing that he has lost touch with his market. Granted that both he and Ratner have the same contempt for the people they have served. But the difference is that O’Leary’s judgement of human nature is much shrewder. Spookily, he seems to know us better than we know ourselves. Just how much more are we prepared to be abused at the check-in counter, treated like cattle as we board and sheep once aboard, before outraged human dignity finally overcomes our greed for lower prices? A lot more, I suggest; even after Ryanair introduces the single paying loo. Ryanair never forgets that, despite our better selves, we don’t really have a choice – and rubs our noses in it.
Still, we can have a few laughs along the way at the great brand’s expense, and this is definitely one of them. The knife between Stelios and O’Leary is an outstanding illustration of mutual corporate and personal loathing. Others examples include Sir Richard Branson and Willie Walsh; and Sir Martin Sorrell and Maurice Lévy. My favourite, however, (for which I am indebted to the BBC News website) is the case of the two Dassler brothers, one of whom (Adi) set up Adidas, and the other (Rudi), Puma. The hostility between the two of them was so visceral that for many years the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, where both had factories, was in a state of undeclared civil war.
Posted by stuartsmithsblog 
I have often thought that Michael O’Leary would be perfectly cast in a Horlicks ad. You know, the ones that star a dastardly traffic warden, bus or taxi driver, with the endline: “How does he sleep at night?”
