A LIFE THAT'S LESS ORDINARY

Accountants are 'born boring', so says an American psychologist. The so-called 'dullness' of accountants is officially a product of their personality rather than their work, according to psychological studies undertaken in the US.

Researchers concluded the key to an accountant's greyness is born and not acquired - they choose the career because of their personality.

In the study of professionals including mathematicians and musicians, accountants were revealed as having a lack of 'emotional intelligence' - which prevents them from being able to read other people's feelings and understand their own.

Sally Edman, a clinical psychologist, told the American Psychological Association's annual conference: 'Accountants are much poorer at working out how other people are feeling; they also have very constant moods,' she said. 'This makes them emotionally unintelligent and unfortunately means they tend to be less interesting than the rest of the population.

'From our research we found people choose professions they think will suit them so we were not surprised to find emotionally unintelligent people end up doing similar jobs,' she added.

There is a huge gulf between this outdated image of accountancy and the reality of business and practice life. Accountants are far from uniform in personality, and are at the forefront when it comes to entrepreneurial flair.

Well-known accountants - successful and far from boring - include the ever-colourful Barry Hearn, the inspirationalJack Rowell and the explosive Rick Parry.

Barry Hearn is best known as a promoter in the world of snooker and boxing.

He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1970 before moving onto Bristow Burrell. He then became finance director of Kensal House Investments, where he began his involvement in snooker.

He is, or has been, the mentor of sportsmen including Steve Davis, Chris Eubank, Herbie Hide and Steve Collins. He has also turned around the financial fortunes of third division football team Leyton Orient after buying the club five years ago. He has no regrets at his chosen profession, and recollected how it all began.

'My mother told me to aim for accountancy when I was 11 - she was cleaning houses for a chap who owned a lot of local newspapers and he said to her in passing, "Tell your son to be a chartered accountant; I've never seen a poor one." And it stuck.'

Rick Parry is a chartered accountant who became chief executive of the football club he had supported from childhood - the mighty Liverpool FC.

He was chief executive of the Premier League for six years, negotiating ground-breaking media and sponsorship deals. Parry was sent to the League as a consultant by Ernst & Young, his employers in the late 1980s. His objective was to gain consensus among the 20 football club chairmen as they set up the Premier League.

He has overseen the competition which brought major investments in new stadia, drove up attendance figures and brought innumerable international stars to the UK.

In the rugby arena, Jack Rowell is one of the most successful managers of his generation. An Oxbridge-educated Geordie who began his career managing Gosforth, he moved to the south-west through his equally successful career in business, and took over as manager of Bath RUFC.

But Rowell is more remarkable for the fact that while meeting these challenges, he was also rising to the top with Dalgety Foods. He became one of its chief executives, and conducted a high-achieving business career. These celebrity accountants in the sporting world suggest a far more rounded range of personalities than the narrow terms of Edman's research.

But it's not just celebrity accountants who lead interesting careers. Many still in practice are involved at the sharp end of the sexiest business deals carried out.

Having a respected accountancy qualification, such as the ACA, opens doors into a variety of livelihoods from forensic accountancy to financial journalism. Once qualified, accountants embark upon their careers with the potential to re-invent themselves as and when they wish, and with a ticket to work anywhere in the world.