Everyone likes a bit of low-level spying and gossip. Be it furtively watching the next door neighbours from behind closed curtains, to having a chin-wag at the coffee machine with colleagues at work, the UK spends - or is it wastes? - a fair percentage of its time embroiled in scandal and hearsay.

And chief information officers (CIOs) are no different, despite their elevated status. Just because they're approaching the top of the corporate ladder CIOs are not immune to enjoying tittle-tattle.

How do you become the technology chief and stay there? The answer, quite obviously, is not by sitting back and avoiding everyone - while the statement, "no-one ever got to the top by being a nice guy," is cliched and hackneyed, it certainly has a ring of truth about it.

And in an age of social networking - both online and offline - where technology leaders are expected to meet and greet with skill and diplomacy, rather than just to tinker with technical tools, it will be the kings of gossip that rule.