For what it's worth, I was recently involved as a judge [1] for a competition the Telegraph ran searching for "Britain's Fittest Director" [2] At no point did

For what it's worth, I was recently involved as a judge [1] for a competition the Telegraph ran searching for "Britain's Fittest Director" [2] At no point did I or any of my team get any indication of pressure, preference or favour from the Telegraph. I was a few steps removed from them, but the impression I got was that they had involved a group of expert judges and were planning to back their judgement, and that that's what they did. Perhaps this competition wasn't as high profile, or the finalists [3] not as controversial. I obviously can't speak about the Startup100 awards or the Telegraph in general, only share that my experience was different. [1] My judging was limited to one of the intermediate rounds. They used a pool of similarly trained business experts from Shirlaws to meet with and assess the business fitness of the top contenders. I ran several interviews, and gave my score and some general feedback to the judging coordinator. [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8308565/Competition-Britains-Fittest-Director.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8308565/Comp... [3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8459412/Britains-Fittest-Director-2011-the-finalists.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8459412/Brit...