After the laid-back Sixties and street-marching Seventies, hard work appears to be back in vogue.

‘I’m here on a hit-man contract, then I’ll transfer, make a packet and retire in 10 years,’ says one Porsche-driving, chain-smoking, 25-year-old executive. He is typical of the new breed of work-loving, reward-seekers who drive themselves to their limits.

Trend-watcher Peter York says: ‘The number of kids who want to go to business school, who are going into business as if it were a totally new idea, is phenomenal. ‘

The ’80s mark the coming of the Age of Hard Work and Longer Hours, a trend, according to George Bickerstaffe of the Institute of Directors, that is permeating organizations right across the board (and Board).

Mr Bickerstaffe believes that today’s Mr Average Businessman barely has time to sleep. He cites the City whizz kid whose gargantuan salary demands a super-human performance to justify it.

Peter York, 38, is an owner-director of the SRU group of consultancy businesses, a TV and magazine journalist and co-author of the Sloane Ranger Handbook.

He says: ‘Executive used to be a euphemism for having perks and a high-flying time. But what is relatively new is the idea of the excitement being the business itself and not simply the rewards. ‘

Clive Bannister, a 27-year-old management consultant (the Company Man), works until he drops. He does a fairly consistent 12-hour day, seven days a week and has had one week’s holiday this year.

‘If you work hard,’ he says, ‘you end up feeling good and valuing your every action because you put so much sweat into it .. at the same time I am getting on faster and I’m also very well paid. ‘

He does not even pay lip service to stress or illness. ‘The former is a piece of self-serving mythology. ‘ And the latter? ‘I don’t get ill because I don’t have the time,’ he says.

Stanley Berwin, 60-year-old founder and senior partner of solicitors SJ Berwin & Co, starts work at 6.30am and often does not finish until 2am. He says work has always come first and second, family third and other commitments a poor fourth. ‘I regret that I never saw my children grow up,’ he says. ‘My wife has been an angel. ‘

But he does not believe that such marathon efforts are a sign of the times, maintaining that all very successful men have always had to work extremely hard.

His fundamental motive for working so hard is a desire to prove himself. To my suggestion that he has proved himself already and that he could lessen his workload, he says: ‘That would be retiring. ‘