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Intel CEO goes clumping with Jobs, Charles and Camilla

Puts Grove under review too

CEO Paul Otellini has come a long way in his more than thirty years at Intel. These days he's bossing around co-founder Andy Grove and hobnobbing with royalty. Not bad for a man with a funny last name that means "little otter" in Italian.

"I used to work for Andy for about 31 years, but he works for me now," Otellini said, during a talk at last night's Churchill Club meeting in San Jose. "He's about to get his first written review in about 20 years."

Grove pipes up from the audience.

"First written review in 40 years. I stand corrected."

Otellini took over the CEO post from Craig Barrett in May, pushing Barrett into the Chairman role. That left Grove as Senior Advisor to Executive Management. We're sure Otellini will deliver an incisive analysis of Grove's performance in that position.

Otellini reckons he learned a great deal of intellectual honesty while serving as Grove's assistant and watching him in other capacities.

"You can't even attempt to pull the wool over his eyes," Otellini said.

Throughout his Churchill Club showing, a well-blushed Otellini tried to flex his comic muscle and didn't do a terrible job of it. In fact, he spent a bit of time knocking Charles and Camilla's recent visit to San Francisco where Otellini, Steve Jobs and Google's bouncing ball boys were allowed to meet the dignitaries at a dinner.

"You must clump," Otellini said, noting that protocol insisted guests form small, manageable groups for C and C Unattractive Factory. "So, I was clumping with my wife, Steve Jobs and his wife and Paul Pelosi (husband of California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi)."

Apparently, someone introduced Otellini's wife as being Steve Jobs' wife when Camilla arrived, but this only led to a simple name correction and not the hot and bothered wife-swapping stuff we've come to expect from the Silicon Valley elite.

"She is a very nice woman," Otellini said of Camilla, adding that Charles showed a robust interest in PC recycling. So there you have it.

Ah, but even as CEO, it isn't all clumping and caviar. At least not at Intel.

"Well, my first (cubicle) was 9 by 12 and orange. It was the 70s," Otellini said. "The current one is 6 by 9 and gray."

Geez. Kind of makes you long for the days when CEOs used company money to pay for vodka-peeing ice sculptures, but that could just be us. ®

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