Great Gadsby was right to walk.

(From Off Licence News)

Oddbins rocked by senior departure" is a headline worth keeping on standby, since it seems to be required so regularly. Andy Gadsby, the widely respected sales director, is the latest person to wave goodbye to Castel, and I hope his former employers are aware of just what they'tve lost.aHe joins a list of escapees that includes a string of high-profile buyers: Emma Nichols, Lynne Coyle, Grant Ramage, James Forbes, Tony Allen and Steve Daniel. Each one of those departures has hurt Oddbins in its own way, but Gadsby's resignation may prove more painful than any of them.aGadsby lived and breathed Oddbins. He was about the last senior person left in Wimbledon who could recall what might now be termed its glory years. For a head office suit, he embodied the straight-talking, passionate and hard-working ethos that was once a hallmark of the rugby-shirted scruffs in the branches. aThe tragedy is that there is nobody to hand the baton to. Oddbins is rapidly descending into an organisation that understands less about its history and heritage than most of its customers do. For some Oddbins devotees, watching the chain's slide from maverick to mundane has been akin to betrayal.aGadsby, like Unwins spokespeople a few years ago, was put in an unpleasant Comical Ali position by his employers by being forced to defend and implement strategies that clearly weren'tt working. Faced with such a situation, the only honourable thing, if you can'tt persuade your bosses to see sense, is to resign. Well done to Gadsby for having the guts to get out when he did.aFrance battles on French wine sales have not fallen off a cliff, as many expected them to do. The latest Nielsen figures show they were up by 3.7 per cent in the year to Dec 1, a respectable enough performance even if market share slipped a little, from 17.7 per cent to 17.2 per cent. The average bottle price is up to AGBP4.29, comfortably above the AGBP3.99 market average and marginally ahead of Australia, the market leader.

We've been preparing for some time for the fateful moment when France, still smarting from being eclipsed by the Australians in the UK off-trade, ...