David Melville, company secretary and general counsel to Le Freeswerve - Britain's biggest French ISP - couldn't help but have a dig at the telecoms regulator when he took part in an industry discussion at the ISPCON 2001 conference in London yesterday.

Anne Lambert, director of operations at Oftel, was first to speak at the dryly-entitled debate Regulatory Issues - an invaluable guide.

Ms Lambert went over her allotted timed by some considerable margin prompting the chair to hurry her along a bit.

However, Ms Lambert ignored calls for her to bring her insight into the workings of the winged watchdog to a close. Instead, she continued to plough through the presentation she had thoughtfully brought along with her to the very end.

She was immediately followed by Monsieur Melville who uttered into the microphone: "I'm not surprised you went over you five minutes...Oftel is usually slow in what it does."

Ouch.

Judging from her expression, Ms Lambert was not amused...unlike the rest of us who struggled to keep our composure. ®