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.
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| 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.”
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| 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
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| 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
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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.
