The one thing visionary business guru Tom Peters had not fully foreseen was that Concorde would start shedding wing parts.

The man who sells the kind of futures you can lace with diagrams, quotations, and anecdotes, and then stick in a best-selling book, was caught out by a rescheduling of flights that delayed his arrival in Glasgow until two o'clock yesterday morning.

A long day stretched in front of him. He was on stage at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall before an audience of 1000 Scottish business people, who had paid #500 a head to hear him talk and keep talking until 4.30 in the afternoon.

Talking at length and without notes is evidently something that comes fairly fluently to Mr Peters, who probably packs a change of voice registers, deliveries, and cadences the way the rest of us need clean shirts.

He could give his presentation, You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness, in his sleep, and for all anyone can be certain maybe he did exactly that yesterday.

Even so, it is revealing to learn what he did in Glasgow in the early hours of the morning between arrival at his hotel and appearance on stage, introduced by Jeremy Paxman. Mr Peters went shopping.

He ordered toilet paper, paper towels, and some non-perishable groceries. It was unclear what decided Mr Peters on these particular items. Perhaps he regards them as souvenirs of Scotland (an idea possibly encouraged by the Scotophobic Paxman). But the transaction, by Internet through NetGrocer, the kind of cookie company that breaks rules and tickles Mr Peters, was entirely to make a point in his presentation.

''I am no longer interested in excellence,'' said the man who first burst on to the scene as co-author of management books In Search of Excellence and A Passion for Excellence in the early 1980s. ''I am interested in the interesting.''

Not the least of the mysteries surrounding Mr Peters is why an audience should be prepared to pay 25 times the hardback price of his books to get essentially the same message. To the sceptic both formats, Tom Peters on the page or Tom Peters live, waving his left hand onstage and sounding like a cross between a braying football coach and a stand-up comedian, come somewhere between sheer hokum and stating the obvious.

But members of his audience were saying that they were finding him ''inspirational''. If they had paid themselves into the gig they would have looked pretty stupid if they found him anything less, but hopefully most were sent at their employer's expense. Mr Peters claims to have clocked up 400 presentations in the past year.

Perhaps the live frisson lies in Mr Peters's engaging ploy of inviting his audience to look at the person to the right and to the left. All three of you will not be here in 10 years time, he consoles them. He peddles the bogeys of being too old at 35, being overtaken by 12-year-old computer-literate whiz kids, working for companies where 80% of the activity is ''crap'' and of business revolution everywhere.

It is part playing on fears and insecurities, and part suggestion that he can deliver a survival code that may help to keep his audience on the inside track when it comes to dividing the losers by the winners. Even if you have his books, there might be a secret that will be imparted only to the initiates present in the hall. If it is ever disclosed, the chances are it will be too cryptic for any three people to agree the same message. Mr Peters happily admits to disagreeing with 85% of what he hears himself saying.

''Two days ago I was flying with a private jet,'' he told his audience yesterday. ''The pilot was doing his checks before take-off. I said: 'What are you doing - counting the wings?''' This is the Peters conundrum. Is he a prophet after all? Or is he, as he admits, just another smart-ass who got lucky?