It’s a little funny for me now even to be using his proper name. We had come to refer to him only as “He,” “Him,” and “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” This is not in any way unusual. That’s how it generally is with most ultra-senior executives. “He’ll be here on Tuesday,” is well understood to mean, “The Chairman will be in town that day.” In the phrase, “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is really pissed about the third-quarter projections,” the identity of the angry senior officer in question is totally unnecessary.

Now that he’s been out of things for a while, however, I’ve heard a lot of people who used to work for the guy and tremble at his name refer to their former honcho in any old offhand way as “Lord Vee,” “The Voldemeister,” and even “Larry,” which I think is totally disrespectful. 

People make this big error, see. They think just because a CEO is disembodied and can only be seen around town in the body of a snake or a ferret, that he’s not going to come back and kick butt at some point in the future. I don’t know why people don’t get it. Look at all the guys who have proven them wrong, from Marius, who came back after being ejected from the top slot in Rome to kill all his adversaries and their dogs as well, to Napoleon, who was very bored on Elba, to Carl Icahn, who just never seems to stay disembodied no matter what happens to him.

Nope. You can never count a really big wizard out. That’s why I’ll be at the Potter party tomorrow night, and will report back to you on what comes down. I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll be having a couple of goblets of fire before I go.