Prince Charles

"I have seen him with really important people like Prince Charles. Peter never tries, he never pushes. Somehow the opposite occurs: they seek his company. Peter is not talking to the Prince of Wales. He is talking to a chap who skis well. For Peter, in those two or three months of the year at Klosters, anybody who can slide on the snow belongs there and he’s a friend whether he’s the Prince of Wales or a ski instructor."

"And so the folklorification of the Dyson continued. Carl Gardner, the editor of Design magazine, told me he had heard people using the phrase 'doing a Dyson', to mean designing, engineering, manu- facturing, and marketing one's own invention. There have been ques- tions in the House based on its success (Nigel Jones, Lib-Dem for Cheltenham, in a science budget debate, 2 February 1995. Cf. Hansard, Volume 253, No. 43, p. 1300); Tony Blair has called it an inspiration to young British designers, and even Prince Charles commiserated with the tales of my early woes: 'It's a classic British story,' he said. 'Nobody ever pays attention to the best ideas.'"