The open mind can find wisdom in the strangest of places.

Watching a video of an old episode of Poirot recently, your contributor heard a great truth about business life.

One of the characters, a dentist – murdered, as it turned out, by one of his own patients, which should have been no great surprise to anyone – remarked, before his demise obviously, that great men are always punctual.

A quick review of personal experience confirms that this is true.

Important people are usually on time. This is because time is money and theirs is worth more than most, so they operate to strict schedules.

Of course, it helps to be rich and powerful enough to have personal assistants, diary secretaries, chauffeur driven cars, first class travel, private jets and helicopters to get to appointments on time.

Yet there is more to it than that: their punctuality is perhaps just another outward manifestation of the inner discipline that got them the resources in the first place.

An old proverb has it that punctuality is the politeness of princes.

Perhaps punctuality is also – at least in part – the making of princes.