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…”