It's time to bid fond farewell to "I wanted to be" which has ended after 49 weeks in which the industry's great and good have revealed their early career ambitions. Intended as a little light relief ­ and as a means of giving you a little more knowledge of the industry's movers and shakers ­ we found it also provided a fascinating insight into what makes the top people tick. Who would have thought, for instance, that Safeway supremo Carlos Criado-Perez really wanted to be a philosopher ­ even to lecture in it ­ but then bowed to family tradition and became an engineer. Still Carlos seems to have put his deep-thinking to good use in creating a new philosophy for Safeway that appears to be turning round its fortunes. As for the rest, well, after painstaking analysis we found they fell neatly into two camps ­ the fantasists with dreams of exciting careers such as a racing driver, fighter pilot and opera singer, and the realists, those with their feet on the ground from an early age, who thought longingly of becoming teachers, accountants and economists. Sport was the most popular early ambition with 16 wanting to be a professional of one sort or another. They included football and rugby players (4), racing drivers (3), sports writers and commentators (3), golfers (2), plus a cyclist, swimmer, cricketer, and golf teacher. Other popular choices were pilot (3), politician (2), actor (2), diplomat (2), and forensic scientist (2). Among the more unusual, Leathams chairman Mark Leatham wanted to be a hunter and used to shoot pigeons professionally to supply restaurants, while bird loving ACS chairman Mike Green wanted to work in a bird sanctuary, until he realised it was mainly voluntary work. But perhaps most surprising was IGD head Joanne Denney's choice of forensic scientist. "Attending post mortems and watching dead bodies being cut into pieces would not faze me at all," she boasted. "I'm not squeamish." Most romantic was Enjoy Organics md Harriet Rhys-Williams' ambition to be a lobster restaurateur. "I used to dream of buying a big house in Soho and converting it into lots of different rooms, each with a sea theme and different lobster menu." Ah, truly the stuff of dreams. {{COUNTERPOINT }}