The past 12 months have proved to be a fine illustration of the transitory nature of fame. (We will be watching; not too many entries, please, from the PM’s constituency in Sedgefield, or from London SW1).We have decided to broaden Today’s categories to include Villain of the Year. The need to do this became apparent after we analysed the contenders for Man and Woman of the Year. We do so in the hope that Labour’s juggernaut will try not to influence the outcome. To be fair, rigging popularity contests is not unique to Labour.

Time magazine is inviting entries for the extravagantly titled Man of the Century ranking, and has been deluged with votes from Turkey, where the magazine has a modest circulation, for Ataturk, father of modern Turkey.
In the absence of Today’s poll, the Independent on Sunday announces the launch of its own survey and invites readers to nominate the Man, the Woman and the Villain of 1997. A piece of harmless fun has been dropped because, it is said, the corporation became suspicious at the number of entries in last year’s poll supporting Tony Blair. Labour’s spin machine has a lot to answer for: massaging the facts, twisting the truth, bleaching the colour out of politics. But one of its more heinous crimes led to the demise of a much-loved institution – Radio 4’s Today poll for Man and Woman of the Year. But in aggressive environments, like the trading floor, I can tell you the successful women roll with the punches.

The women who say they are going to change this environment are the ones who end up being brutalised and sorely frustrated.”. And often when a woman gets angry in a meeting she’s a bitch,” she says.”Empathetic skills are seen as the territory of women, but we now know that it’s an important ability to coach. Conversely, women need to be much more challenging of each other. Women tend to look much more than men for similarities – how are we alike? – in order to maintain a connection or warmth of spirit. For example, women are often told that they are being too emotional. Yet, in large corporations, where the scope for interaction and general touchy-feeliness may be limited, the value of such a “personal” business style is moot. One thing is certain, however – with more women doing business with each other, traditional female codes of conduct will continue to shift.According to Dr Melanie Katzman, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of London and a specialist in gender issues at the office, it is time to look past sex and concentrate on the issue of competence.

“You still have certain ingrained notions of what is proper female behaviour, and when you deviate from that there is a punishment. “While it might well be true that to be successful women in the Eighties you had to out-aggress the aggressors, now those rules have changed,” she says. Maybe that’s how the culture in the City can change.”So is the secret of fruitful female relations in the workplace simply a question of not being ashamed of empathetic skills? For Ross, it hinges on security, feeling confident enough as a woman to drop the pin-stripe and the attitude. “And I’m not saying it’s a particularly ‘female’ level, only that women have less experience in developing that business persona that men have. And, gradually, the layers of artifice were eroded and eroded.

By pudding we were talking about where she was going on holiday with her boyfriend.”For Ross, this was a strength not a weakness. “I would actually talk to this woman now, not because she’s done a great job of selling her company, but because I’ve engaged with her on a more human level,” she says. Sarah Ross, an attractive, approachable 33-year-old investment analyst with Citibank, recalls a recent business lunch with a female broker which shocked her in its brusqueness. The broker, who like Ross was Oxford- educated, was the most aggressive woman she had ever met “I was really surprised by her,” admits Ross. “She didn’t smileonce and it started off being the worst kind of lunch I’d ever had.