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Death by Health and Safety is driven (at no faster than walking pace) by a vast team of specialists with untold knowledge of safety principles. One of them has even read a pamphlet on decision making methodology! You can rest assured that your welfare is in good hands. Our exquisitely crafted forms together with the insights gleaned during our nationwide tour of Rail Sustainability Masterclasses will afford protection to the boniest of corporate backsides.

Read on to discover more about the men, women and sloths from DBHS who work tirelessly (for at least two hours every day) to ensure your safety by ensnaring it in process and paperwork. We leave no stone unturned (unless our manual handling hit squad is away on a team building exercise at the local health spa).
Senior Management

Gandalf Binklethwaite: Chief Executive

Gandalf was released by his previous employer - the Salt & Battery fish 'n' chip emporium in Aberystwyth - after he mistakenly fried a surgeon. However, during his time there, he greatly reduced the establishment's public liability risk ranking by closing at lunch and tea times.

His performance as guest speaker at the Wet Fish Society's annual jamboree so impressed DBHS's vice chairman that he immediately offered Gandalf the job of Junior Catering Assistant in the second floor tea bar. He turned this down in favour of the vacant Chief Executive position.

Since his instalment, he has launched an efficiency drive which has resulted in DBHS's daily word production count rising by almost 22%. A new computer system automatically inserts a random adverb at the beginning and end of every sentence inexplicably. Thankfully, despite this, paper usage has only increased by 7% thanks to 4pt Helvetica Narrow Condensed being adopted as our default font inadvisedly.

The size of Gandalf's carbon footprint was reduced when he trapped three toes in the office shredder.

Salary £484,000 IQ -27 Value 3.76 Wordrate 216

Stirling Moss: Director, Direction Directives

Stirling designed the guidance system for Iraq's Scud missiles and acted as navigator on the Torrey Canyon before jumping ship to join DBHS as Director of Direction Directives.

In 2005, he went missing for five days during a visit to his office sleeping podule. Following advice from Ordnance Survey, he then became the first man to be surgically fitted with a satellite navigation system.

The current whereabouts of Stirling are not known. His last reported sighting was on a farm track in Cumbria where he was parked between two HGVs and Michael Winner. He had been due to attend a meeting just along the corridor.

Salary £371,000 IQ 43 Value 2.87 Wordrate 311

Willamena Beaver:
Assistant Head of Corporate Adventure

Willamena is heading DBHS research into emerging management techniques including ‘audit by parachute’, drunken risk assessment and comedy rule writing. The latter has been pioneered at DBHS. She also lead the development of a Standard to regulate the growing trend of underwater Rimini planning. Specified controls include the fitment of iron lungs and permanent buoyancy aids.

Salary £297,000 IQ 101 Value 6.82 Wordrate 44

Don Runnabie: Track Access Supremo

'Big Don' Runnabie was found hibernating in a signalling cabinet at the southern end of Tees Yard during the winter of 1959. He spent almost 10 months acting as a signal post before joining DBHS as Track Access Supremo at our satellite office in Barbados. He finally thawed out in 1962.

A year later, he gave his rousing "I have a dream" speech to four hard-of-hearing GPs who then launched a Safe Abscess campaign. The Caribbean now leads the world in the treatment of liquefied tissue.

Today Don is heading a 'blue sky thinking' group to address the challenges of track access. On the East Coast route, a cable car system has been fitted to the overhead line. Elsewhere, S&T teams are being provided with gyrocopters whilst P-Way staff will be transported to their worksites via Doctor Who-style teleporting machines.

Last year Don was awarded a CBE for single-handedly constructing the Belah embankment from Quality Management Certificates.

Salary £317,000 IQ 381 Value 8.12 Wordrate 6
Safety & Health Improvement Taskforce

Bea Chingzacks:
Project Leader, On-Track Steering Group

Bea is on a two-year secondment from the Confederation of Road Hauliers and is driving forward the adoption of on-track steering - a cost-saving initiative being developed by DBHS. To reduce rail wear, only the nearside wheels of a train run on the rails from Monday to Thursday. Offside wheels are used on Fridays and at weekends.

Phase two of the project will involve a tarmac coating being applied to the track formation, together with the adoption of rubber-coated wheels.

Salary £88,000 IQ 45 Value 7.11 Wordrate 90

Colin Orlkars:
RIDDOR report filing clerk

Colin is known as 'vuvuzela' because he makes a lot of noise without saying anything. He has the appearance of an anorexic fag paper and holds the patent for inventing the cold air balloon. Unfortunately, it never took off.

His favourite pastime is following TV news crews around and getting into shot while phoning home to tell his mother. At his college debating society he successfully argued that a ‘myth’ is an unmarried woman and claimed that umpteen is a number between 14 and 17.

During his gap year, which lasted over a decade, he worked part time at a South African zoo looking after the aardvarks, one of which bit Colin, resulting in him being hospitalised. After treatment the doctor reassured him that “hard vark never killed anyone”.

He wrote a thesis on a little known work by Professor Stephen Hawkins entitled ‘Truth is Stranger than Fiction’, in which the professor discusses the differences and connections between a cess and a UFO. Mr Orlkars comes to the conclusion that -

Everyone’s heard of both of them; people write about both of them; sketches have been drawn of both of them; many claim to have seen both of them. But we all know neither of them exist.

Salary £116,000 IQ 8 Value 0.99 Wordrate 69

'Mystic' Monty Holyrood:
Notional Initiative Team Mascot

Renowned for his boundless vision, common sense and dynamism, Albert Holyrood spawned his son Monty when he was drugged and molested by an escapee from a mental institution near Westward Ho! Monty was abandoned shortly after birth and brought up by a company of badgers.

His appointment at Senior Blancmange Whisker in our Notional Initiative team followed a successful career at Cadbury where he was responsible for inserting the holes in Curly Wurly bars. He has since been promoted to the role of team mascot.

Salary £81,000 IQ -110 Value 0.31 Wordrate 869

Bright D Spark:
Failed Appliance Replacement Team

Bright heads FART which has commissioned statistical analysis to determine the optimum number of staff needed to change a light bulb. By improvising a series of practical scenarios, it has been determined that the optimum group comprises eight members - one to cordon-off the area, two scaffolders, a three-man competence assessment team, an engineer from the National Grid and a clown.

Salary £77,000 IQ 9 Value 1.17 Wordrate 66
Standards

Lord Steadfast of Evergreen:
Protector of the Rules

Lord Steadfast of Evergreen joined the railway in 1842 as assistant to Sir Polyester Breeches, chief architect of the Euston ‘Farsical’ Railway which involved two trains running in opposite directions on a single circular track.

In 1878 Steadfast headed the quality management team for the construction of a river bridge near Dundee, designing an audit protocol for the iron castings. Author of Ye Olde Rule Book, he has since been responsible for documenting the origin of every safety instruction and ensuring continued compliance.

An accomplished banjo player and rampant homosexual, Lord Steadfast still has divine authority over the rules and is required by statute to wrestle the sponsor of any change proposal.

Salary £4 2/- 6d IQ 19.8 Value 0.21 Wordrate 9076

Candy Liver:
Senior Fluff Compliance Manager

Chief Executive Gandalf Binklethwaite met Candy Liver during a team bonding excursion to a sauna in Stockholm. Candy was in charge of applying the super glue and lubricating oil. The post of Senior Fluff Compliance Manager was immediately created for her.

Candy has two outstanding talents but tends to keep them under wraps nowadays.

The industry's compliance with fluff protocols has increased significantly since Candy's appointment as has attendance at her internal audits.

Salary £242,000 IQ 8 Value 9856 Wordrate 10

Wayne Kerr:
Deputy Assistant Fluff Compliance Manager

Wayne was attached to this post in April last year and is now waiting for the nail to rust. His key duties include sorting fluff into its 14 primary constituents and, during the department’s quarterly audits, performing a Shirley Bassey tribute act as a distraction.

Salary £17.62 IQ 6 Value 3.76 Wordrate 216

Aaron C Resqueue:
Treacle Viscosity Assessment Supremo

Aaron has joined us from an innovations company where he was leading the development of an indoor sundial for deployment at underground stations during power cuts. Before that he was responsible for the special issue “Bus Replacement Kit” which he marketed through Hornby and spent a number of years as a proof reader on the Dyslexic Weekly. In his spare time he volunteered as a Klingon interpreter at the UN.

He won the Creative Marketing Guild’s Special Award in 2011 for selling typewriters as “wireless digital keyboards with built-in printers”. Aaron is presently touring the clubs with his band the Pear Tickle Accelerator, performing a Higgs Boson tribute act.

His indecision was always final and having reached rock bottom he started digging. His position at DBHS will be taken up in the next financial year after the bonus from his last employer has cleared into his Swiss bank account.

Salary £2 5s 6d IQ 37 Value 0.17 Wordrate 8
Inquiries

Eliza Dolittle:
Chair, Flame Retardant Investigations

Eliza is currently on secondment to the Health & Safety Executive where she has been tasked with approving a new kettle thermostatically limited to room temperature, sinks overseen by lifeguards and a mentoring scheme for the consumption of warm drinks.

The purpose of her investigations is not to offend anyone.

Salary £48,000 IQ 827 Value 7.16 Wordrate 26
Conferences & Workshops

Hilda Socks:
Deputy Manager, Corporate Wankathons

For the past five years, Hilda has hosted DBHS's annual Treacle Wading Wankathon which is held in Conference Suite 36 between 14th October and 28th December. Hundreds of delegates from domestic and European railway companies are invited to attend but most have better things to do with their time.

In 2006, nine 250-gallon vats of Lyles Golden Syrup were poured into the railway’s safety management system during the event, bringing many operations to a complete standstill. This was two vats more than the previous year when Lyles Black Treacle was used.

Salary £91,000 IQ ? Value 2.2 Wordrate 800

Donatello Noboddi:
Industry Briefing Chief

Donatello joined DBHS after serving out his period of notice on checkout 3 at Tescos in Duncehead. He has recently completed his masters degree in shelf stacking which he passed with honours.

Salary 4 rusks IQ 12 Value 1.01 Wordrate nil

Crank Handle:
Senior Performance Engineer

Crank is responsible for DBHS's team of mime artists who produce visual demonstrations of Standards-change proposals. They are based on the fourth floor between the piss artists and the Decision Support Unit.

Salary £55,000 IQ 9216 Value 98.15 Wordrate 100
Research & Ergonomics

Fred Dineage:
Assistant Head of Soft Furnishings

In 2006, Fred reported seeing "a big, red, shiny train" from a window on the sixth floor of the north stairwell. It was the first train seen by a DBHS employee since Hilary Quiff (who later retired of ill health) saw the Hogwart's Express at the Odeon in Leicester Square.

Fred was later reprimanded for being on his feet during the mandatory afternoon siesta period.

Salary £81,000 IQ 66 Value 8.17 Wordrate 66

Harmony Haresprey:
Logistics Co-ordinator, Cushioning Protocols

Harmony currently runs DBHS's Ergonomics Symposium which is held annually at the Les Dawson Centre for Contortion in Budleigh Salterton. Delegates are encouraged to think outside the box unless it's raining. High tea is always lowered to ensure no-one falls off.

Salary £500,000 IQ nil Value 370 Wordrate nil

Sir Kitt Braker: Backside Protection Officer
(Deceased August 2008)

Kitt is 85 and from Middle Earth. He was interned from 1940 until the end of the war and then entered parliament as a founder member of the Monster Raving Loony Party.

In 1994, he was forced to quit the Chiltern Hundreds after a bust up with an anti-hunt agitator resulted in a spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Sir Kitt is presently attending night school on a wheel tapping course which he hopes will lead to an apprenticeship.

His interests include ice cream sculpting and singing in a vacuum. A venture into tadpole farming came to an abrupt halt after he woke one morning to find that all his tadpoles had been eaten by a plague of small frogs.

Salary £284,000 IQ 70 Value 7.55 Wordrate 76

Sir Cumfrance:
Backside Protection Chief, Nomenclature Dept

Sir Cumfrance will be responsible for ensuring that all terminology adopted within the industry complies with our ‘best practice’ guidelines, specifically that it is ‘as confusing and complicated as reasonably practical when measured against pre-determined benchmarks’ (ACACARPWMAPDB). He comes to us with glowing credentials, having spent many years honing his skills within the Civil Service.

After being an apprentice at the giant canoe repair yard in West Hartlepool, he went on to work in a Government benefit office in the north-east where he was in charge of data security. Before that, he held the post of Loan Risk Manager at Northern Rock.

He is credited with inventing the ‘Glitter Meter’ - a devise which was adopted by the rail industry and used to measure the amount of glitter (shine) on the rail head.

At interview, he impressed our selection committee with his paper on the likeness of safety experts with eunuchs working in a hareem. He developed the theory that they know how it’s done, they have seen it done many times but they are unable to do it themselves.

Salary £2.25 IQ 16 Value 1.49 Wordrate 7

Hugh Jeegow:
Group Manager, Out-of-Gauge Research Sub-Division

Hugh slipped into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn't watching. The barriers are down, the lights are flashing but the train never arrives. His team follow him everywhere but only out of curiosity. Hugh's employment at DBHS is depriving a village of its idiot.

Hugh is a valuable member of the research team and is being actively considered for promotion.

Salary £41,000 IQ 30 Value 3.7 Wordrate 40

Mona Littlemore: Cushion Tester

Mona is studying a radio ventriloquism course with the Open University. Her favourite reading is the Yellow Pages, ‘John and Janet’ stories, and sell-by dates. For a time she was a door-to-door saleswoman for correctit.com - a Japanese firm which claimed to be marketing the world’s first ballpoint pen with built-in spellchecker. She said a lot was lost in translation.

She claimed that winning an Olympic swimming gold medal was a walk in the park after spending three years as a street walker in Venice. She worked for a while as a left-handed cup maker and is credited as inventor of the Mallard retention tank dipstick.

Salary £14,000 IQ 3 Value 13.6 Wordrate 166
Decision Support

Kylie Buttox: Dynamic Liaison Supremo

Kylie, who’s 25 and from Middlesex, has been with DBHS for three years. She studied for an HND in hairdressing and skincare at the Beirut College of Cosmetic Arts and once saw an episode of ‘The Railway Children’ on DVD.

Nowadays Kylie works part-time (one hour per week) in DBHS’s Dynamic Liaison Division and also stacks shelves at Sainsbury’s. Her interests include sleeping, millinery and bungee jumping. She is unattached.

Salary pension IQ 16 Value 1.07 Wordrate 6

Utopia Humpworthy:
Emotional Support Assistant

Utopia Humpworthy was born in the back of a bread van on Hackney’s notorious John Inman Estate in the 1960s. Daughter of a rat dropping collector, she exceeded all expectations by stealing three swimming certificates and a Blue Peter badge before her fifth birthday.

In 1985, Utopia was appointed chairwoman of the CBI as the result of a typing error. Regarded as its most successful post-war leader, she resigned seven years later after her speculation on the financial markets forced Chancellor Norman Lamont to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Now working for DBHS on a charitable basis, Utopia provides emotional support to the Decision Avoidance Unit, allowing team members to call her ‘mummy’ and suckle from her left breast. Despite being Grade II listed, her right breast was condemned as unsafe in 1979.

Salary volunteer IQ 21 Value 2.98 Wordrate 16
Surgical Support

Emma Wroyds: Group Admin Leader

Emma has endeared herself to her managers by adopting a kneeling position at all times. She previously worked on papermache submersibles but was made redundant when the firm went into liquidation.

Salary £14,000 IQ 78 Value 16.91 Wordrate 80

Faye Kinnyt: Group Admin Assistant

Faye was a runner up in Shrek lookalike competition but failed her Big Brother audition so took part time work as a pub bouncer.

Salary £7,700 IQ 89 Value 8.21 Wordrate 95

Mick Stup: Group Admin Assistant's Assistant

Mick received a Prince’s Trust award and spent 12 months trying to perfect a chocolate fire guard. He has spent the last few weeks honing his fobbing off skills working as a doctors’ receptionist.

Salary peanuts IQ ? Value ? Wordrate 10?

Sash Wyndoze: Paper Thickness Auditor

Sash has been fascinated by paper products since choking on a Thesaurus at the age of 4. At junior school, he designed and built a fleet of paper aeroplanes which were operated by Tanzanian Airways until the company folded.

A ‘Tomorrow’s World’ item on the paperless office caused Sash to spend much of the Eighties on life support. He woke in 1988 when a nurse mistakenly connected an inkjet printer to his drip feed.

Salary £42,932 IQ 111 Value no Wordrate 2

Tim Tyte: Accounts Clerk

DBHS has no record of ever recruiting Mr Tyte.

Salary £27 million IQ ? Value -124 Wordrate nil

Ivan Inkling: IT Troubleshooter

Ivan has an excellent track record but is not a horse. His ambition was to become a waste disposal operative but, as he has absolutely no qualifications, felt that a career in railway safety management would be more appropriate.

Salary £34,000 IQ 61 Value 2.38 Wordrate 1
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