Apartheid-era South Africa was the subject of a thousand cutting metaphors during its troubled existence. But it had never before been described as an omelette.
When FW de Klerk stepped on stage at the Yorkshire International Business Convention, that was the phrase he used.
He said his journey from right-wing upbringing to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President who dismantled the apparatus of racism was a gradual, tentative one. Unlike the biblical conversion of St Paul, there was no flash of light.
"There was no Damascus Road experience. It was a process," he said. "By the end of the 1970s it was becoming clear separatist developments had failed. Secondly, the whites wanted too much land for themselves and thirdly, we had become totally economically and socially integrated.
"We were basically an economic omelette. Once you mix it up you can't separate it."
Mr de Klerk told the audience of 700 delegates he realised South Africa had to face the facts.
Its enforced separation of blacks and whites had failed to produce either stability or harmony and the system was morally indefensible.
Speaking this morning at The Spa in Bridlington, he said: "The following factors made change possible. Firstly, the Government's realisation its policy of separate division had failed.
"It had failed to bring justice to all South Africans and it was morally unjustifiable.
"Continuing conflict would simply turn South Africa into a wasteland."
Mr de Klerk said businesses should seek to recognise and take opportunities for positive change.
"Windows of opportunity have a way of closing on you and never opening again," he said. "Jump through them now."
Delegates at the conference also heard from David Fishwick, a multi-millionaire entrepreneur who took on the banks in his hit TV show, The Bank of Dave.
Mr Fishwick set up an independent loan company in his home town of Burnley to support the small businesses he believed were being overlooked by international financiers.
He thinks small-scale lenders with relationships based on trust are the way forward.
Mr Fishwick, who runs a minibus sales firm, said: "If people rob a bank they go to prison. Bankers who rob people get a bonus.
"There are just over 1,000 large towns and cities in the UK. If each of those opened a community bank which lent to 1,000 businesses, that would be a million businesses rescued. Problem solved.
"That is my ultimate goal, although I haven't got the time to run them. I need to go back and sell a few minibuses.
"Doctors and nurses who replace people's hearts deserve bonuses. People who do stressful jobs like that deserve bonuses. Bankers do not."
