Overmatter: fishy business

What’s this we spy? Walstead chief executive Paul Utting moonlighting?? Something fishy going on over the summer holidays???

Thanks must go to eagle-eyed PrintWeek contributor Barney Cox for spotting this print namesake while he was on his travels in East Anglia. 

But maybe there’s something in it. We know that Utting is familiar with the area, having once worked at Jarrolds. And he spent many years working alongside legendary St Ives honcho Brian Edwards, who had a handy turn of phrase when dismissing lesser print firms as “winkle-bag printers”, so there could be an ironic twist in embarking upon such a venture. 

What’s more, having purchased a crab sandwich in North Norfolk, Overmatter can say with some certainty that the margins in fish products can be considerably higher than those in web offset printing. 

Fortunately Utting found the idea of his piscine namesake equally amusing: “Yes this has been a lucrative sideline for years but not as much fun as printing!!!” he quipped. 

All in all it’s somewhat disappointing that this is not actually an official sideline for Walstead’s CEO, who is no doubt more than busy enough overseeing the ever-expanding group’s empire at home and abroad. So we’ll stop carping on about it.