We Can Watch and Have a Wank

Following on from last week's celebration of the Adline years, this is a kind of celebration of the Marketeer years (1999-2002). They weren't all bad..

Park and deride
Graeme Park was a mad bastard ten years ago when he was the editorial assistant at the Drum as an 18 year-old. He’s someone I’ve stayed in touch with over the years and he’s now joined us in Hong Kong and, without boosting his ego, he’s doing a pretty good job. For some reason, in the Glasgow days, I thought it was the height of hilarity to hide Graeme’s mobile phone in my boxers or lick it. It’s no wonder he was so keen to come and work with me again.

Mr Lindsay

The best Graeme story, though, involved Andrew Lindsay, creative director of the Union, one of Edinburgh’s most successful agencies to this day. Graeme, at the time, being the lowest on the food chain, was charged with the unrewarding job of sorting out Ads of the Month, our regular review of the best advertising coming out of Scotland – a lot of which, to be fair, was pretty good. Most of it seems pretty shite these days though.
Andrew, a fairly serious individual, had agreed to be that month’s – or fortnight’s – ad reviewer. His comments were the last element required for one particular issue, so GP was under pressure to get the copy in. Somehow I’d come across a website that allowed you to forge website addresses, so I sent GP an email, supposedly from Andrew, which basically said: “Can’t do Ads of the Month this month. Big changes happening here. Call me later, but don’t say you’re Graeme from the Drum, say you’re an old friend of mine called ‘Duncan’.”
GP got the email and duly reported back to me. Telling him he was potentially on to a big story, I suggested he immediately call Andrew back. Brilliantly, he got Andrew’s voice mail and left a message saying: “Hi this is an old friend of yours called Duncan. Can you call me back?”
The rest of the office was in on this, so the spectator sport of Graeme explaining to Andrew Lindsay, when he eventually called back on Graeme’s direct line, that he wasn’t really an old friend called Duncan, but actually Graeme from the Drum was quality comedy. Makes me wonder why I got sacked.
He believes, by the way, that somewhere in the US, there is a home for celebrity monkeys where they watch their old movies all day. I wonder how much the Drum misses him.

Divide and unconquer
The Marketeer launched in August 1999 and got the best reader feedback on any Carnyx launch ever, according to a market research survey I was only informed about 12 months later. Mendacious bastards. They also doubled the costs of the printers’ invoice in the monthly management accounts in a bid to convince us we were losing money. Despite, asking several times, I never got to see the original printers’ invoices. God I hated those bastards (in the interests of clarity, I am not referring to the printers here).
The Mark I Marketeer family was mad, bad and dangerous to know, but creative and successful. We made 15k on the first issue and started to build a recruitment and classified base, essentially aping the Adline model. Billy Anderson, the platonic ideal of a fuckwit, then decreed that we would no longer pursue either classifieds or recruitment. The magazine never recovered.
In Jan 2000, the Manchester office had a rare visit from Gordon Young, Diane Young’s token bitch. He went out for dinner, on separate occasions, with me, Jim (deputy editor) and Larry (head of sales). On each occasion, he asked his dinee how they would they feel if he sacked the other two. Stupid twat forgot that we were all mates (at the time) and subsequently immediately compared notes, leading to a confrontation between Mr Young and the three of us, one that he squirmed unconvincingly throughout. Inevitably, Larry and Jim took this as a cue to leave – Larry successfully suing Carnyx at an employment tribunal – and the Marketeer declined hugely in term of both editorial quality and revenue. At its nadir, it bought in two grand, largely in terms of advertorial. A sad end to a bold venture.

Happy Heather after
Despite my preference for the Adline years, the Marketeer years were not entirely lacking in fun. An unsung hero of this time was Heather Cairney, Laurissa’s sister who came into work on the classified section – and did a pretty good job. Heather had a knack for one-liners, which I hope she uses in her new job as a radio journalist. Two instances in particular made the Marketeer Quotes Book.
On one occasion, Jim was out buying pizzas to sustain a late night office session. Heather said verbatim: “I hope Laurissa gets back soon. I can’t handle 12 inches on my own.”

Heath

On the occasion of my 36th birthday (Jan 2000), Heath said: “It’s your birthday mate, I’ll buy you a pint.”
Being a bit louche in those days, I quipped back: “ I think I deserve a bit more than that. I’m 36. How about anal sex?”
Heath: “I’d love to mate, but I don’t have a dick.”
2-0 to Heath.

Blackpool Tools
I’ve not learned much in life, but I do know this – never trust number plates or Blackpool clairvoyants. Bit of a shit claim frankly. In the early days of me, Jim and Larry jumping ship from Adline and joining the Drum, we had a series of meetings to thrash out the deal – a complete waste of time as none of the terms were ever adhered to by Carnyx. This saw us meeting in a number of out of the way places, Berwick-on-Tweed on one occasion and then, finally, Blackpool.
Jim, as ever, was our chauffeur on the trip from Brum to the ‘Pool, whilst Larry and I necked champagne in the back. Hey, it was the 90’s, well just about. We were still riddled with doubt about doing the deal – on one hand we had Lee Newton, who was obviously a useless cunt but in charge of Adline’s fortunes, on the other we had Gordon and Diane Young, hardly the most trustworthy of individuals. On balance, we should have bought a McDonalds franchise. I might have had three stars by now.

To pass the time on the way, we invented the advertising agency number plate game. This saw points awarded to whoever spotted a car numberplate with agency initials (in our defence, it was a three hour trip). So if we spotted a JWT, BBH or BJL it was cheers all round. On the final approach to Blackpool, when the subject of “Are we really going to do this?” finally came up we decided, being balanced, mature individuals, we‘d only commit if we saw an agency-related number plate in the next five minutes. At that point, a red Ferrari with a number plate containing “GGT” cruised by and our fate was sealed. I bet it was Trevor Beattie, the git. Larry later consulted a Blackpool clairvoyant who told her: “You are here to do a business deal and it will be very successful.” I still reserve the right to sue.

Dying Young

Smelly shoes

In the dying days of my time in Glasgow when they employed an expensive lawyer to help them break my contract, one of the accusations levied at me was that I got pissed at industry do’s. Everyone got pissed at industry do’s. The Drum had even carried an account of previous (and subsequent) Drum editor, Richard Draycott, getting so pissed at  a Glasgow Pub Club event that he threw up on his own shoes. I always tried to throw up on someone else’s.
As I sat there listening to this, the image of Diane Young pissed out of her tree in a lift at the Roses and clearly on the prowl came unbidden to mind. I said nothing and just took the settlement
.
It’s the real thing

Not that I was always that well behaved. There was one Media-Link do at castle near Edinburgh in 2000. I was kind of obliged to go, as was Scott Seeley, probably the best sales person the Drum ever had. Realising how dull this event was likely to be, we (well I – Mr S was perennially skint due to his proclivity for having too many babies) invested in a few lines of coke. We wandered around this magnificent castle completely out of it (hardly the only ones). I think Media Link may have made some kind of announcement. Would love to know what it was.

Scott – land of the brave
Talking of Mr Seeley, still one of my best mates from the Carnyx days… Every Monday morning, the Carnyx group staged a sort of Nuremburg rally where each department head would have to give a brief summary about what they’d been up to. This saw twats like Billy Anderson lying about how much they’d achieved in the last week and the production department simply looking bemused. I regularly had to make something up about progress on Unlimited or Prospect, which there seldom was.
On one memorable occasion, Scott was called on to comment on progress in the sales department. Deadpan, Mr Seeley said: “Not much really. We’ve been sat on our arses all week.”
He left soon after, but I wish I’d had the bollocks…

Black-eyed T
In the war which was immediately sparked by the launch of the Marketeer, Adline was determined to shut us down by cutting rates and offering guaranteed editorial etc. One of the things we both pitched for was the EMAP Big City campaign. We won it, largely, I bet because Jason Munslow, then head of PR for EMAP, fancied Larry more than he fancied Debbie Brown, head of Adline. To be fair, we were also enjoying our brief honeymoon period of being sexy and talked about.
The campaign saw us working with Communiqué, Love and EMAP to produce a series of photo strips, featuring such industry luminaries as Ray Sale (then chief exec of CIA) and several others which I forget. The last one we ever did was December 1999 and featured a photostory dps including the Marketeer team. Unfortunately, a few days before I’d split up with a fairly robust girlfriend in Birmingham. Crucially, I forgot she’d studied judo and I ended up with two black eyes. Panda-like, I headed for the two-page shoot. Memo to self – split up with people by fax or email.

Heavens to Jupitus
I am slightly amazed that anyone has entered the Carnyx Best UK Events Awards. It’s like entering the My Family Sitcom of the Year Awards. I remember one of the first Roses Awards managed by Carnyx, after buying it from Ray Sale et al for 40k, the compere was Phil Jupitus (who got 18k for his trouble, although he put bugger all effort into it). At one point, he got heckled by some pissed bloke in the audience and Phil replied: “I’m getting paid 18k for this and I wonder who is at home fucking your wife.”

All sort of settled down, until the chairman’s prize when the creative director of Channel Four reignited the whole thing by calling the bloke a “cunt” and offering him out. He was straight up on stage and nose to nose with Mr Jupitus, before being manhandled out by the bouncers. He was chucked out of the building, but tried to sneak in the back way. Where the bouncers were waiting. Later at the front entrance, still trying to get back in, he accosted a bunch of students and got a right kicking before the bouncers, eventually, intervened.
He later sent an apology blaming it on his medication. Yeah, right, four pints of medication and a whisky chaser when you’re ready bar man.

We can watch and have a wank
Amidst the madness that surrounded our decamping from Adline, the writs, threats and general unpleasantness, one story still stands out as a beacon of bizarreness. We’d just arrived in Manc and the Chase had pro bono agreed to design the new mag. We went over to see them and the designs were brilliant – the Drum uses them to this day. A bit lost, we decided to go and see a few agencies that we knew. I’m not going to identify these guys as they are still mates, but it’s too good a story not to recount.
We bumped into to the two most senior figures from this agency on the way back from a birthday celebration, both clearly pissed. We explained we’d left Adline etc and they hurrahed in a way that didn’t entirely convince me that they had a fucking clue what we were talking about. Predictably, we headed off to a local bar.
Here one of the two started to take a particular interest in Larissa, complimenting her on her arse. Later said agency MD pressed his home phone number into my hand and said: “Come over next Wednesday. There’ll be plenty of Charlie. My wife will go down on Lauriss and we can watch and have a wank…”
I never went. Larry? Who knows? Toodle pip.

Last year I got socks

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After having some less pleasant memories stirred up by the vile-smelling troll who featured in the recent Cunt of the Week article, I thought I’d share a few happier thoughts, all from the Adline years (1993-99).

1. Big Night Out

I had a number of memorable nights out with agencies, but this one sticks in my mind. Big was a relatively new agency, but obviously had a lot of attitude and self-belief, something in short supply among many of its Midland counterparts. After a lot of banter, we eventually arranged a night out for them to demonstrate the delights of Leicester – their base - perhaps the most challenging brief they have ever had to work on.
The evening didn’t start well. Booking into my hotel, selected for me by the Big boys, I noticed a familiar aroma, one which reminded me of home. It was cat’s piss (we had three of them at the time).The whole hotel stank of it. To this day, I can’t smell feline urine without thinking of Big Communications.
From there we progressed to the pub and then to a Chinese restaurant, where the proprietor insisted on serving us chilled red wine, which, pissed as we were, we found hilarious. We even sent the third bottle back as it wasn’t chilled enough. Then it was off to a local club where I had the unique experience of giving a disco piggy-back to a future plc ceo. Ah, happy days. Perhaps unbelievably, we oft said we’d repeat the experience, but sadly never did. I’m still up for the re match.

2. Arthur Bitter

Aside from nights out, the 90’s were a great time for lunches. My most memorable occurred with Arthur Porter, late of the late Crains. At the time he was new business director of TMD Carat (now Feather Brooksbank). We met in some Italian restaurant on Deansgate and man did we go for it – at least three bottles of wine (possibly more), then on to the brandies. We started at 1 and finished around 6, by which point I was so pissed I had to book into a hotel as there was no chance of me getting safely back to Brum. Arthur, however, drove home to Macclesfield on the basis that he was “too pissed for public transport”. He didn’t last long at TMD, but a top bloke nevertheless.

3. What Boys Like

Another memorable evening involved a now senior figure at a NW PR outfit, when she outlined to a beguiled male audience “what boys like”. This seemed to largely involve considerable oral sex expertise and a willingness to take it up the shitter. Suffice to say, none of the blokes at the table was able to get up and order the next round due to a sudden outbreak of unwanted “stiffies”. I think she may have had to do the honours. Drinkswise, that is.

4. Drifting…

One of my favourite people on the Manchester scene was the late Ray Sale, chief exec of CIA Manchester. Ray had a gift for making an entrance and was deliberately late for any event he was meant to be attending. I was sat next to him at one of the MPA Christmas lunches, when he was the chairman, and Mick Miller was the compere for the event. The main act for the day was the Drifters and their backing band duly turned up on stage and launched into the intro for “Under the boardwalk”…about five times, much to the bemusement of the fairly pissed crowd. Later I managed to intercept a note from Ray to Mick: “Can you do another five minutes? The Drifters are stuck in the lift.” Maybe you had to be there.

5. Gathering little Moss

David Moss is one of the forgotten heroes of the NW ad scene. He ran Quadrant Advertising in the mid-90s when the agency was entirely propped up by – allegedly – part owners Lada and Proton. They pissed all the other agencies in town off by recruiting when the others were on the verge of closure as part of the 90s recession. Their big thing was integration and something they banged on about remorselessly in their brochures and mailings (this was pre-web site days). I bumped into Mr Moss at the NW IPR awards in 1995, when he was pissed out of his tree. He always had a thing for red wine did Mossy. He took me aside and said: “Tony, this integration thing, complete and utter bollocks. It never works.” Martin Newman, then his head of PR, looked on aghast.

6. Browned off

It wasn’t only Mr Moss who misbehaved at public events. There was one Birmingham Publicity Association summer event which took place on the eve of Debbie Brown, managing director of Adline, going into hospital for a major elective surgical operation. She is and was the bravest person I know. One of our sales girls had a load of coke on her, so the three of us ducked into the handicapped toilets at the ICC. God knows what they made of Deb’s blood tests the next today but, to be fair, being coked off your tits is the only way to enjoy BPA – now PACE – events.

7. Condomania

Back in the late 90’s when my first marriage was coming to an end, I had an affair with one of the girls in the Adline office. She had a partner, I had a partner, so rather shamefully most of our illicit trysts took place in the Adline office – once or twice on the boardroom table, which made board meetings a little hard to take seriously – I was constantly on the lookout for an odd stain or a stray pube. The very first time this took place the two of us arranged to be in the office early, well before anyone else was due in. The deed was done and we, of course, practiced safe sex. Debbie Brown then arrived unexpectedly early and we stood in the reception office with a durex wrapper on the desk between us and me and the partner in question praying she wouldn’t spot it. Longest five minutes of my life.

8. Wam Bam, Thank you Mam

Slightly after this, during the point when the trial separation had proved it worked, I was seeing another girl who was fairly senior in the Leeds office of an international PR company. She was married. Through various ploys she managed to arranged to spend the night with me in my then home of Kidderminster, although officially she was meant to be in London. As she left to go back to hubby in her company car, we joked about the consequences of her crashing. Sure enough, five mins later she calls me and tells me she’s crashed the car. I assume this is a joke – until I get there. The car is completely written off in a town she had no reason to be in. We spent the next three hours working out two timelines – one for hubby and one for work – and we got away with it and also invented the Van Morrison game, but that’s another story.



9. Last year I got socks

Eleven years ago, when I was 35, things were not going so well. My marriage was finished and I had a few relationships which really weren’t going anywhere. Out of the blue, on my 35th birthday, I was invited over to the home of one of the Adline sales girls. She took me in to the dining room and said: “There’s three lines of coke here. Let’s do them and then you can shag the arse off me.” “Blimey,” I thought, “last year I got socks…”

All New Cunt of the Week

Clearly a twat....

Niall Kennedy is going to prove an exception to my normal rule. I’m going to revisit the twat and what a twat he is. This is largely provoked by his recent postings here. If ever anyone was condemned from their own mouth…
Some people brighten up a room just by entering it, some by leaving it and some by being the star of I Was Impaled On A Pole And Nibbled At By Lepers playing on a continuous loop on a widescreen plasma TV. Such was Niall. I worked with him briefly – but not briefly enough for my liking - at a school in West Beijing. My first inkling that things were going to go tits up was a reference from his tutor, which basically said he was a tardy, unreliable cunt. By that point it was a bit late. The reference basically had to be dragged out of the tutor in question as she obviously didn’t want to say what she really thought. At the time, I reckoned it was probably a bit of a personality clash. As it turned out, that was unlikely. Niall didn’t really have much of a personality.
He arrived in Beijing and went through the usual introduction to life in the PRC and his responsibilities as a teacher. He was noticeably bored and twitchy throughout the entire induction process which made me wonder if he was having ketamine withdrawal symptoms. With hindsight, I reckon that – or something similar – was pretty much exactly the case.
The first Saturday of term – weekends were our busiest period – there was no sign of Niall (he pronounces it ‘Neil’), so I had to take his class. He eventually arrived 20 minutes late, which didn’t impress the kid’s parents. They basically demanded we change the teacher on the spot, which we duly did. Niall was delighted as it basically meant he had to do less hours whilst still getting paid the same. He had no concept that it basically meant someone had to do more work. Self-obsession and a virtually sociopathic disregard for others were something I came to realise characterised Niall.
There was one occasion when he was working at one of our off site-schools alongside another teacher, Muriel. As his classes finished after hers he had to wait 30 minutes before being picked up and brought back to the school. He tried to insist that we changed the classes around – ideally that Muriel would do both classes and he would do even less work. By this time, we pretty much had his number, so we largely ignored him. The principal of the school did, for two weeks, personally pay for a taxi to pick him up. Ken, deputy DOS of the school, and I soon developed amnesia about this arrangement and left the twat to stew.
He shared an apartment with Tom, another fresh recruit to the school. Tom, to be fair, just wanted to be in China and didn’t really want to teach. We had a series of complaints about Tom’s lack of preparation for his classes and it was obvious he would have to go. To be fair to him, Tom told us he wanted out and we agreed an exit package. Part of this agreement was that he could stay in his company-funded apartment in West Beijing. We then started to get complaints from the other tenants in the block and the landlord about late night drinking and generally anti-social behaviour. We duly asked Tom to leave. The complaints persisted and it turned out it was Niall not Tom who was the source of the problem. He had, however, blithely allowed his flatmate to take the blame for his own behaviour in order to secure the apartment for himself. Yes, he was that much of a cunt.
As the summer school loomed – halfway through Niall’s contract – we had a bit of a dilemma. We had a new off-site school we were opening up in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing. Niall obviously wanted to go, but it was impossible. Not only was he completely irresponsible and untrustworthy without direct supervision, he also had distinct personal hygiene issues which would have made it completely impossible for him to share a room with any of the other foreign teachers. One teacher made a point of coming to see me and telling me if he had to share accommodation with Niall he wasn’t going and would rather quit than be obliged to. We didn’t send Niall who took this rather personally, which I must admit rather made my day. I’m nice like that.
This was also the time of the Sichuan earthquake and there was a move to send some of the foreign teachers over during our downtime as part of the relief effort. One thing we all agreed on was that Niall was not going to be part of the delegation. We felt the region had suffered enough.
Summer 2008 saw a new initiative at the school – we were going to produce end of term videos featuring the classes we’d taught. This was a bit of a ball ache, but we all rallied round to get it done – with one notable exception. The Chinese teachers – our partners in all of our classes – were under no illusion that unless these videos were finished on time they would face financial penalties, this was even though finishing the videos was actually the role of the foreign teachers. All of the foreign teachers finished their videos on time – except for one. His Chinese partner teacher was Janice, a teacher who I was very fond of,  who was heavily pregnant at the time. She laboured over this video – not her role – tears literally streaming down her face and was very worried about getting into trouble if it was late. Niall, meanwhile, lay in bed despite making promises he would come in.
I was livid and when he got in we had the long overdue showdown and I suspect every word rings in his ears to this day.
Good.
It is also noticeable that Beijing’s pollution problem has substantially reduced since Niall left. Every time he left his bedroom window open during the Olympics a Canadian athlete fainted.
He also claims he went to Oxford. I find this enormously hard to believe. Culturally, socially and even in matters of punctuation, I mean really… Standards have fallen since my day.
The one thing I have taken away from this is the importance of both taking up references and taking them seriously. This is particularly important in the TEFL industry when people are coming from disparate territories and where disputes are common. The fact that people like Niall can continue to get  jobs in this sector will only continue to bring it into disrepute. Parents, kids and colleagues are shortchanged by people like Niall. Any potential employers reading this, do your kids a favour and avoid him like the plague.
One other thing I should add, in all conscience, as a word of warning to anyone considering employing Niall as a teacher, is this - early on in Niall's time with us there was an 'incident', one which involved inappropriate behaviour. This was reported to us by several concerned Chinese teachers. As a result, instructions were issued that on NO ACCOUNT was Niall to be left alone with the younger children, particularly girls. This was a policy that was maintained until the day he was sacked. To be fair the incident was never repeated, but then we made sure the opportunity never arose. To potential employers, I would say this - inflict him on your adults if you're desperate, but keep him away from kids or at least make sure there's always another adult present at all times, especially during level testing...
As a curious PS to this, this link (http://www.citizendia.org/European_Universities_Debating_Championship) demonstrates he didn't actually go to Oxford at all but to Glasgow University. Presumably the facts were changed to stop us getting a reference from his university. Degree certificates are easy to forge in the digital age. I wonder if he actually graduated. The more I look into this, the more, like Kennedy himself, it stinks to high heaven.

Niall eventually got round to responding. He's not known for his repartee or ability to complete projects. It's the expected mixture of whinging, self-serving, delusion and outright lies. It largely goes to prove that his writing abilities are every bit as poor as his teaching ones. A few things need addressing, but they can wait - until it's recruitment time in the TEFL industry again. http://therealtonymurray.blogspot.com/

This made my day - http://therealtonymurray.blogspot.com/2011/03/something-to-think-about.html. Here Kennedy accuses the school of mismanagement for not sacking him when suspicions about his innapropriate behaviour toward young girls first emerged (this is despite the monitoring and containment protocols that were put in place in line with our policy and as outlined above). His defence amounts to: "What kind of school wouldn't sack me for being a paedophile?". I hope no other academic institution proves so remiss. In light of the number of hits on the original posting from non-english speaking countries across the world, I doubt Kennedy will be in close proximity to young children any time soon, which is just as it ought to be.

As an intestesting addendum for would-be employers, this strikes me - Kennedy's employment as a teacher has largely been in places like Venezuela and China. The thing these places have in common? Unlike some other countries, such as Japan and Korea, they don't require incoming english teachers to sumbit to a criminal records check in their own country prior to taking up an appointment. Why do you think he's only targetted countries with this policy?