As head of the most powerful advertising company in the world, Sir Martin Sorrell is used to criticism. Usually, though, it is about his vast pay package, not his gender politics.
He has come under fire from an unexpected direction after Amanda Foreman, the historian, accused him of “everyday sexism” which, one can only hope, will teach him not to forget a woman’s name.
Sir Martin, 71, the chief executive and founder of WPP, made the mistake of crossing Dr Foreman when they were honoured alongside a British diplomat in New York. They and Danny Lopez, the British consul-general, were being celebrated by the St George’s Society of New York for making “an impact on the Anglo-American community on both sides of the Atlantic”.
After a long acceptance speech in front of an audience that included the writer Barbara Taylor Bradford and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the DreamWorks chief executive, Sir Martin, who was paid £70.2 million last year, congratulated Mr Lopez and someone called “Angela”.
Dr Foreman, 47, whose biography of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was made into a film starring Keira Knightley, was not amused. After an account of Sir Martin’s faux pas appeared in the New York Post, she tweeted a copy of the article and wrote: “My congratulations to . . . #whatshername. Any other women with similar horror stories? #everydaysexism.”
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Sir Martin has since apologised to Dr Foreman, whose own speech, according to a witness, “had everyone on their feet cheering”.
The historian, who is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said she bears no ill will towards Sir Martin. What appeared to have rankled most, however, is that he did not seem to care.
She said: “Throughout my career I have never seen a woman get somebody’s name wrong, or mistake them for the tea person or ignore someone because of their gender. But I have seen lots of men do that.
“I do not think this kind of behaviour is down to malice. It has to do with assumptions and expectations about gender. What many women complain about is that they have to fight tooth and nail to get equal respect and worth.”
Dr Foreman presented a BBC Two documentary series called The Ascent of Woman last year, in which she argued that women have been in the vanguard of every revolution from France in 1789 to the Arab Spring in 2011, only to see their rights whittled away.
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Women are participating more now, she argued, because education and political rights were helping more women to join the workforce, leading to greater productivity, freedom and security.
Just so long as the men remember their name.
Sir Martin Sorrell declined to comment.