LamBert became a service industry professional without really knowing it.

A youthful veteran of face-on customer-care, he applied the same principle to hospitality management as he had to most other jobs he'd done before - which is to say he was nice to everybody - and everybody loved it. The right people responded in numbers, both in terms of colleagues and a clientèle, and, as many contemporaries went Two-for-One in the face of recession, the Pub & Restaurant business for which he was responsible continued to grow and grow. At a rate which belied the statistics but which came as no surprise to those who watched him work.

He has values, you see? He has exceptionally high standards. He's modest - no, he really is - and he's possessed of a mannered integrity that is fundamental to a business like ours. He wouldn't know how to half-Cock it; he just hasn't got it in him. He cares too much what people think and he's his own worst critic. For those, and for many other reasons, not least of which is that this publication crowned his pub National Dining Pub of the Year for 2010, he's an authority in his field.

Now working as a freelance source of copy across an unusual variety of industries, he continues to keep an ear to the ground and a practical hand in hospitality via a banging boozer in EC1.