My name is Nigel Bottomley. I am British, 45 years old and worked in industry all my life until 1993, when I went off on my own.

I have been doing business support work for many years and this usually involves meeting clients at their offices or mine at regular times, or spending time telephoning or emailing each other. I might do a business plan, or help with the restructuring of the company, or assist with a disposal or whatever.

The need to have meetings create a number of restrictions including geography and the available time the client has to see me. The desire may be there, but the immediate problems of the day sometimes force delays. In practice, it is very rare that the client actually needs a face-to-face contact.

Sometimes a question by email with a fairly rapid response is adequate. Sometimes a business plan or a report is needed, which can be done at my office and emailed or faxed to the client. For some reason I have found clients (or perhaps they found me) at the other end of Britain, and I still manage to give them a good service. I may be in a small country, but it still takes 5 hours to drive to the south coast or into the centre of Scotland.

So why not develop the theory of remote working to its ultimate conclusion? A couple of years ago, I spent some time working in the Far East, but still had to look after clients at home. I took my laptop with me, connected to the email each day and continued to support my clients. And it worked ~ they are all still with me and happy being so.

If the client is like-minded, and is comfortable communicating by email or fax with the occasional telephone conversation, then why shouldn't I be able to help those clients without the face-to-face contact?

I can communicate with banks and other financial institutions in the same way (many actually prefer it these days anyway), and my experience and knowledge is in my head, so as long as I have the means to communicate, then I have the means to provide an excellent service by remote control.