THE easy quip would be that Mary Collin could talk for England, except I can’t really say that because her mother’s Irish. But you get my drift.

However, she is a nationalised Brummie, which puts her smack in the heart of the Midlands, although she lives these days on the edge of the village of Hanbury, near Droitwich, adding a further ingredient to the mix that made an hour fly by.

Some interviews, to put not too fine a point on it, are like wading through treacle. This was like catching a wave on north Cornwall’s Polzeath beach and surfing to the shore. Hang on in there and enjoy the ride.

In her half century on this earth, Mary Collin has done many things. Probably too many in her younger days she might admit, when six months in a job would qualify for a gold watch in her mind.

Frequently they lasted a lot less. Just long enough to work out she could do it in half the time and then she was restless. The result was that after telling management they should improve their systems, she left. Sometimes the suits along the top corridor would appreciate the advice from the fizzy young blonde they passed on the way to the coffee machine. Other times they didn’t.

Either way, it didn’t matter much to Mary, because she eventually worked out there was a career to be made out of this. She arrived for a chat with me about her life and times as one of the country’s top business coaches. In simple terms, a business coach is someone who looks at a business, any business, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, even newspaper publishers, and suggests how it could improve its performance.

The person may not know how to joint a side of beef, make a cake or design a front page, it’s all about business systems, which apply roughly the same to any company. At which point most folk might yawn and switch off. Navel gazing would seem more exciting.

But Mary is a top cat at this game and not only that, she’s a founder of the Professional Speakers Association (no surprise there), a member of the Institute of Directors’ education board and reads tarot cards.

In fact she occasionally uses the cards in her business coaching but maybe we shouldn’t go too far down that avenue in case some firms don’t appreciate the alternative approach. Although she says there is nothing to fear and a tradesman would be a fool not to use all the tools in his box.

Mary Collin was born and brought up in Sparkbrook, Birmingham. Her description of her parents was illuminating: She said: “My mother was a mad Irish woman from County Cork and my father made Alf Garnett look tame.”

Despite that, they remained “the best parents in the world”. They worked on the buses – he drove, she was a conductress – and the double act must have been a sight to behold.

Mary’s mother had come over to England after the Second World War in search of an exciting alternative to the pastoral peace of rural Ireland. The bright lights of Birmingham beckoned, which was where she met her future husband. However, by the time Mary was a little girl, the family had moved out to Staffordshire to give Birmingham a bit of breathing space.

She said: “I always wanted to work in a record shop.” Strangely, a record shop is about the only place she hasn’t worked.

Between 1972 and 1979 Mary had countless jobs. I asked how many and she ran out of fingers: She said: “It was almost a different job every week.”

Part of the time Mary spent temping with the PerTemps agency, which was ideal because then the change was automatic. But it was all a subtle learning curve, because she was looking and learning all the time.

Then in 1979 she took up a job in financial services and went out to the Middle East – including a four-year spell in Cyprus. During that time Mary worked for the BBC at its press centre in Nicosia, which must have been quite a coup for someone with no media training, but there you go. Force of personality and all that.

Returning home she set up her own training company specialising in personal and professional development.

Mary said: “I’m passionate about people getting the best out of their lives.”

As an adjunct to that, she is also passionate about companies making the best of their resources. Which is where the “business coach” comes in.

She said: “People may question the worth of a company using a coach but if you look in the world of sport, for example, most people, either teams or individuals, have a coach. Someone to stand back, see the big picture and advise them on how best to perform.

“Those people may not have been brilliant players in their own right, but they can see a strategy. Would Manchester United be as good without Sir Alex Ferguson? You can argue about that but there is no doubt how important he is to the club.”

While Mary Collin has no ambitions to don a tracksuit and have the board of directors jogging around the office car park at lunchtimes, she claims that a good business coach can make “a massive difference” to a company. Sometimes just by stating the blindingly obvious: something the people running the operation have been too close to the action to see.

Bearing in mind all of the above, has anyone from Worcester City Football Club thought of giving her a ring?