When i still had pretensions of being a proper writer...

I wrote this back in 2005 when I had pretensions of being a proper writer, I still think it's pretty good....

“Did I ever tell you about the time I found that magic paper handkerchief?”

Dermot Kennedy studied Saul, his drinking companion of many a year, sourly.

“I don’t believe you did,” he said eventually.

Saul took another swig from his pint, as though the subject was closed.

Dermot took another gulp of his own pint. He was not a man to be easily out-nonchalanted.

“Saul,” he said, at length. “I must admit, Normally you don’t interest me. Normally, you sit on that barstool and you talk about your Marjorie, little Sean or Ursula. You might make a remark about the footie. You might even express a view about the weather. But you’re not what I’d call an interesting man…”

Saul nodded in a not particularly interesting manner.

“But today, Saul, today you interest me…?”

Saul looked up questioningly, richly puzzled at this turn of events.

“Today, Saul, you sit on your bar stool as normal – but then – in a very un-normal way – you ask me if I’ve heard about the time you found the magic paper handkerchief…and suddenly you interest me…”
“

Ah,” said Saul.

“Not to excess, you understand Saul. But I would say my interest is piqued. Somewhat.”

“Ah,” said Saul again, abstractedly sipping his pint.

“So, Saul, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d be grateful if you had a mind to elucidate me further…in your own time, of course.”

“Well,” said Saul, “there was this time I found a magic paper handkerchief…”

“I think,” said Dermot, “that we have established that and indeed my once piqued interest already feels a hint of the wane…”

“Well,” said “Saul, “I had one of them colds…”

“One of what colds would that be, Saul?”

“One of them colds that people catch when it’s cold. A great snuffling, snot-nose of a cold, a great runny head full of mucus sort of a cold…

“Ah, one of them colds,” said Dermot.“And I was at the airport…”

“And what was a man like yourself doing at the airport then, Saul, what with you having one of them colds, an all?”

“Well our Marjorie…”“Ah, Saul, I can tell the details of the necessity of your visit to the airport are not necessarily what you’d call pertinent to your relating…”

“Right you are Dermot, pertinent they were not, never less so,” said Saul, tapping the right-hand side of his nose meaningfully.

“Anyway, there I was on this strictly non-pertinent visit to the airport with one of them colds and the snot was streaming out of me like one of them rivers….Dermot nodded.

“And our Marjorie said that I needed a paper hanky,” said Saul

“She wasn’t wrong there Saul. Smart woman your Marjorie, if not a particularly interesting or pertinent one.”

“Very true Dermot. Never a truer word. Anyway, as luck would have it, there was one of them shops there…”

“One of them hanky shops?” asked Dermot.Saul looked doubtful.“No Dermot, I don’t think it was strictly a hanky shop. They sold newspapers and books and magazines and I think they had some of them DVDS. And I think there was some of those NOBO magic markers on special offer, too.”

“Ah it was one of them John Menzies,” said Dermot.

“Or…” said Saul thoughtfully, “it could have been a WH Smith, now I think of it…”

“Aye,” said Dermot, “most likely…”“Anyway, I went in and asked them straight out for a packet of hankies.”

“And did they oblige?”
“Dermot, they did. So there I was, at the airport, with one of them colds and a packet of freshly purchased paper handkerchiefs, nasal relief for the use of.”

“Not a situation I would be envying you of.,.”

“So I opened the packet and blew my nose on the first hanky, all crusty it were. After that is, not before. And I was just about to throw it away, when it spoke to me…”

“It never…”

“Sure as I’m sat on this stool sipping this pint that you kindly provided, it spoke to me.”

“And you never thought to mention this before…”

“Well, Dermot, the moment has never seemed right.”

“Well what did it say to you, you there with that cold an all?”

“It said: ‘Don’t throw me away….’”

“It never…”“Sure as I’m sat here on this…”“I think I gather how sure you are Saul. What else did it say to you in that airport there?”

“It promised me riches, Dermot. Riches beyond the ken of mortal man. It promised to give me that Claudie Schiffer for a wife and it promised to make me irresistible to all women and make me the happiest man in Christendom…”

“And what was to be your part of the bargain, then Saul?”“All it wanted in return was that I didn’t throw it away, cast it aside, like a…”

“Like a used hankie?” Dermot proffered.“Very true and very apt,” said Saul.

“So what did you do?”

“Well Dermot, I did what any man would do, I kept it. It was that Claudia Schiffer that swung it, ever since I saw her in the Magic of David Copperfield, I always thought there was a certain…”
“Chemistry?”

“Yes Dermot, chemistry and, I thought, it would be wrong for either of us to fight it further…”

“So you acquiesced?”

“That I did Dermot. And I treasured that used hanky as though it was my own. Which, in many ways, it was.”

“Well what was the outcome then, Saul? I’m sure it was your Marjorie that was down for the Pub Quiz Tuesday and not the lovely Ms Schiffer and that’s not a mistake a man would make easily…”“

Well, you Dermot. I was sorely misled. I treasured that snotty hanky, gave it everything a slightly-used man-sized ply-fold nose receptacle could crave. It wanted for nothing, but in the end…”

“In the end, Saul?”

“In then end, Dermot, it didn’t deliver. Women still found me largely resistible and the gas bill still goes largely unpaid. I was deceived, cruelly deceived by a Kleenex that was no better than it should have been..”

“You mean...” said Dermot.

“Yes,” said Saul, “it was nothing but a tissue of lies. Same again?”

Duff by Name, Duff by Nature

Sometimes you have to call a cunt a cunt. Sometimes they are a cunting cunt. Into the latter category basically falls Ian Duff, the man who killed Scamp, the best magazine about regional marketing ever. Ian had been basically jibbed by Wilimington and was a bit on his uppers when he came over to talk to me about Scamp. He was on the verge of cocking up his marriage – after about a week – and I was in no state to sell issue 2. Frankly I wanted to sit under a stool, drink rioja and listen to Pink Floyd for the rest of my life. Glory days.
Ian supposedly took over sales for issue 2. After one meeting with him the printers said they wouldn’t support  issue 2 – reneging on the initial agreement. But who could blame them? Slimy, unreliable and unconvincing – and those were Ian’s good points.
Back in the office he then tried to con me in to paying him two grand for issue one, which he was not even a part of. He spent most of his time in the office trying to make up with his bride of seven days and asking me for the number of a girl at Adline he’d had a very brief affair with. She was far too good for him.Predictably we parted company.
Obviously even more broke than I was – which was an achievement – he took to calling me under various guises, he pretended to be his lawyer on one occasion. He then took to calling me and telling me I had offended various “strong forces” and was “in for it”.
Avoid. A complete and utter twat.

Love didn't tear us apart

Today rather than slag off those  I disdain,  I thought it might be nice to do somethining different...

James O’Donnell

James O’Donnell. Perhaps the best mate I ever had and a shocking omission from the first list, but I hope Jim is in no doubt about my regard for him. He has rescued me from so much shit over the years. Driving from Glasgow to Leeds, Birmingham to Blackpool, picking me up when everything I owned was in a garden in Bourneville. Possibly the nicest bloke in the world. Ladies take note. He has a few bob. I want to be his best man though, which may put you off. Most diamondish of geezers and now motoring correspondent for Gafencu. A small payback for all he’s done for me over the years. If I come back to the UK and fail to catch up with Jim then it’s an unsatisfactory trip.

Al Sim

What can you say about Al? One of the most charismatic and intelligent blokes I know. His departure from the industry is a huge loss. It is a tragedy that his life has come to be defined by one untypical night and I have nothing but scorn for the blokes who have revelled in his problems. Without Al you would have nothing to revel in. My contempt for your self-serving opportunism knows no bounds.

Paula Kelsey

Over the years, Ms K and I have had our differences and in terms of madness she is in the box of frogness capacity. She has turned Fresh into a credible awards event and not compromised on the quality of judges. And she once shagged a boy band, but I promised not to mention that and we did get an invoice.

Michael Taylor

Editor etc of Insider, I can’t help but admire his integrity. Never ever been compromised. He is the reason that Insider has risen above the competition and that Insider remains the Holy Grail for business approbation in the NW.

Chris Lloyd

I have never met Chris and not enjoyed his company. He is not going through the best time in his life and I hope to convince him that one day he will be back to what he was. He takes a lot of convincing.

Sandy Lindsay and Nina Wheeler

The queens of Manc PR, both very different, but God have they done well. They have rewritten the PR landscape in the NW, both very astutely calling on the services of Il Duce, without whom nothing in the NW PR world ever seems to succeed.

Martin Carr

Mr C and I go way back and we have ridden out so many bad and good times together. Anybody who ever tells a Jewish joke has never met Martin – one of the most generous and genuine blokes ever. He has picked me up from the gutter and not been (obviously) judgemental. There’s not many like that.

Younis Khan


Younis I miss you mate. Get in touch. During an awful period in my life when I once read the news on Asian Sound Radio (don’t ask) Younis was a beacon of decentness. If you’re having a fit of anti-Muslimness then spend a bit of time with Younis.

Gordon Young

Despite my many postings to the contrary, I would still have a beer with GY. He is surrounded (and married to) scum, but he was basically a decent guy. Not the sharpest by any means, but I wonder these days about how happy he is about the complete lack of integrity or validation his sorry little would-be empire has. A guy that was out of his depth and has been swamped by cunts. We could have achieved so much more.

My Missus

The only reason I am typing this and not dead in a ditch

The Day I Shagged Kylie up the Arse

I must confess you have been lured here under false pretences. Miss Minogue’s orifices, rectal or otherwise, have remained unsullied by the Murray manhood – despite the many nude Polaroids and samples of pubic hair I sent her by recorded delivery. Why, shame to admit, I have not even had Dannii.
However, I have borrowed this notion of boosting traffic to my blog from my dear old pals at The Drum. A token mention of the World Cup here, a fleeting and shallow look at the iPad and even some ill-informed shite about China – all aimed at attracting unwary googling browsers to their site and artificially – and temporarily – swelling their visitor numbers. Love to see the number of revisits.
Shame on my pals at Brazen et al, supposedly experts in social media, for falling for this tosh and retweeting the Drum’s claims to be the 999th most read website in the UK, which still sees them nestling somewhere between donkeyporn.org.uk and johnselwyngummersfavouritesmells.co.uk.
Deceptive, lacking verification and only taken on board by the ill-informed – if Carlsberg wrote positioning statements for Glasgow-based publishing companies…
Nick Clegg was my bitch at Eton by the way

“Can we get away with a fanny that big?”

Just to underline the fact that I don’t hate every publisher, I’ve ever worked for I thought I’d share a story from 20 years ago when a much-younger Tony Murray spent two years (1989-90) as photo editor of Mayfair. Back then Mayfair wasn’t the Paul Raymond-owned gash-fest it is now. It was owned, published and edited by Ken Bound, a former sub on the Daily Sketch.

It was Ken’s firm belief that Mayfair, far from being locked away in between tugs in a short-sighted man’s sock drawer, was actually the subject of lofty debate at the high tables of Oxford and Cambridge. Here, he believed, dons and visiting archbishops would frequently discuss the veracity of Mayfair’s World War I tales of derring-do and act with outrage should we mis-caption the wingspan of a Sopwith Cuckoo. The truth, I suspect, was very different.

Ken had a curious collection of aphorisms he used to apply to the subject of journalism – in particular The Three Things Which Don’t Sell magazines. On a quiet afternoon, looking for a little amusement, it was always tempting to insert an anecdote about dwarves into a piece of girl copy. Inevitably, Ken would turn up in the editorial office five minutes letter and say: “Tony, I have to tell you, there are Three Things That Don’t Sell Magazines. One is dwarves, another is barbed wire and the third is…well I forget the third.”

We never did find out the third.

It was a slightly surreal place, where you’d often find the editorial team clustered in the main office and looking up at a slide-projected image of that month’s proposed centrefold with Ken asking: “Well boys, can we get away with a fanny that big?”

My favourite story, though, perhaps took place at Christmas 1990 during the Mayfair party, which were always highly drunken affairs. We started at lunchtime in a wine bar in Holborn and, as this was the last Mayfair party (Ken having sold the mag to Paul Raymond for four million quid), we really went for it.

Sometime in the early evening we staggered back to the Mayfair office. Ken was particularly pissed and soon departed for his private flat on the top floor. The rest of us were left sitting in his office, where we soon spotted the only thing in the building left to drink – a hugely expensive bottle of champagne bought for Ken by the printers as a farewell gift. It took us all of five seconds to decide to drink it.

The next morning, hungover and very much the worse-for-wear, we trooped into the office. A slightly indignant Ken called us all together and said: “I’d just like to know who drank my bottle of Champagne last night…”
Quick as a flash, David Jeffs, the features editor, responded: “Eh, you did, Ken…”

And we got away with it.

The mendacious Mr Jeffs, by the way, is now an assistant editor on The People.

Cunt of the Week: Riddle Me This...

>It is often said that if you remember the early days of the Marketeer, then you never really knew where the sales department stashed their coke. This is a tale from those days.

An interesting counterpoint to the public humiliation that Alistair Sim has had to endure over the last 18 months is the vast number of people in the industry who Got Away With It, individuals who did similar or worse things to Mr Sim, but simply escaped vilification solely by virtue of not getting caught. One such individual is Robin Riddle, one time Northern Sales Rep for the Economist, a role he presumably fulfilled through either osmosis or telepathy as, despite sharing an office with him for some six months, I never actually saw him do anything at all.

One of the typically far-sighted and innovative moves made by the Carnyx Group during the brief period they genuinely had a presence in England was to arrange to reduce the overheads of its Manchester office by sharing a space with the Economist, which consisted entirely of the “Riddler”.

When I say reduce the overheads, what the ever-duplicitous Carnyx Group actually did was inflate the claimed rent and allocate a supposed portion of it to the Economist, a portion which actually pretty much covered the whole of the real rent.
Robin was bought into our one room office (on the third floor of a building on the corner of York Street and Fountain Street), on the condition that whatever happened in “Marketeer Mansions” stayed in “Marketeer Mansions”, However, the keen Carnyx-costcutters overlooked three vital facts about Robin:

a) He was a compulsive gossip, with very little to do
b) He organized the MPA lunches so a had a ready made audience of people to compulsively gossip to
c) He was a complete cunt

Far from keeping schtum about the goings-on in Marketeer Mansions – which at that point was a marginally less happy ships than one ferrying a dead Viking to his eternal reward - Robin used confidential information – sales data, internal squabbles etc–to persuade the many that that usually bodyswerved to avoid him to break the habit of a lifetime and spend more than 50 seconds listen to him pontificate. He was an Olympic class pontificator.

He then compounded this by getting involved with one of the Marketeer sales girls, whose main interest in Robin was promising sexual favours in return for him paying off her burgeoning credit card bills. Unfortunately, whilst her visa final demands were the exclusive province of the Riddler, her heart and sundry other organs were, largely, the exclusive province of another (married) man.

When, despite howls of protest from me and James O’Donnell, the Marketeer’s deputy editor and token grown-up, said sales girl and Romeo Riddler decided to move into together (said sales girl now having rent arrears as well as threats to her pets from Visa hitmen), it was obvious things were going to get worse. Much worse.

When the World’s Least Trustworthy Woman moves in with the World’s Most Paranoid Man, Dark Satanic Forces can take the day off, and put their feet up, secure in the knowledge that they are well surplus to requirements.

And so it came to pass that WLTW and WMPM were sharing an apartment, a bed, her bad debts and, most critically, a PC.

Said sales girl made the mistake of using the shared PC to arrange a hotel tryst with her One True Love of the Month, fatally neglecting to clear her in-box and sent box. The Riddler, of course, having found his previous fiancée in bed with another on at least one occasion, scrupulously checked WLTW’s email accounts on a daily basis. Hourly, if she was out.

On this occasion, the Riddler found details of hotel bookings, times, dates etc. Unsatisfied with merely being able to confront the visa-indebted vixen with his discovery, he stalked her all the way to Leeds on the day of the tryst.

Entering the hotel, he then knocked on the illicit couple’s door and pretended, in squeaky tones, to be housekeeping. Upon looking through the peephole, the coitus interuptees swiftly realized it was not an amusingly-voiced Malmaison manservant but rather a revenge-bent Riddler. Quite sensibly, they decided to remain on the reverse side of the door, until the Riddler began reeling off details of the married man’s home address, phone number, wife’s employment and, most chillingly, the name of the school where his kids went.

Understandably freaked out by the Riddler’s OCD stalkery, said married man did the dishonourable thing and promptly fled, leaving our tiny slip of a sales girl to tackle the disapproving-of-their-nobbin’ Robin alone. Hardly his finest hour – and you know who you are and I know you’ll read this.

Now the Riddler is hardly an impressive specimen of masculinity, but he was twice as tall as his petite ex-paramour to be. Such inequality, however, did not stop him from smashing her head into a wall and then spitting in her face. Nor was this the only time. After this he took to hanging around outside her apartment at night and repeating the process on more than one occasion. A nice guy. I wonder what his new colleagues at the Economist in North America would think should they ever find out…

An amusing aside on the whole Riddler affair and one which sums up the Walter Mitty-like nature of his existence… Early on in my acquaintance with him he started using an alias – “Robin James”. He explained to the bemused Marketeer crew that was this because his father had been a counter-terrorism operative working against the IRA and that he had been officially warned by the Secret Service that his distinctive surname made him a target for revenge attacks by disgruntled Irishmen.

The truth, like most things about the Riddler, was far more prosaic. His former fiancée, Jenny, had baulked at taking on his surname should they marry, feeling that “Jenny Riddle” sounded far too similar to a well-known urination euphemism – hence the name change. Upon finding this out we quizzed him as to why he hadn’t opted for “Taylor” rather than James. Although, we found this hilarious it rather predictably, like so many other things, went clear over Robin’s notoriously vacuous head.
If you would like to nominate a Cunt of the Week, please email me on tonymurray37@hotmail.com. Anyone, of course, who nominates me may well find themselves in this hallowed spot.

Who Gave Love a Bad Name?

Falling out of Love is never a pleasant process, especially if your former partner – or indeed partners – are determined to inflict every iota of added injury they possibly can, with the incentive of their own pecuniary interest very much to the fore.

Now, I am not referring to any of my ill-advised trysts of yesteryear, but rather to events of a more recent hue. Let me take you back – and please supply your own shimmery dissolve here – to the events of November 2008 and the court case that saw Alistair Sim, founder and managing director of Love Creative, take the stand in Stockport Magistrates’ Court and plead guilty to assault.

The gravity of the situation saw Sim (right) immediately quit his role, a decision announced in a statement by Dave Palmer, a fellow director of the agency, thusly: “We were aware that Alistair was having some personal problems, but the severity of the situation has meant that his position has become untenable at Love. It was Alistair’s decision to step down, and under the circumstances it was the right decision to make.

"Undoubtedly, this is an extremely traumatic time for Alistair and his family, and, although we cannot condone his actions in any way, we are very sympathetic to all involved. Alistair hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day running and strategic direction of client accounts for some time, and his departure, will have no impact in this area."

As it turned out, Palmer and his associates had a strange way of being “very sympathetic to all concerned”, but we’ll come back to that in due course. First let’s take a look at the court case itself, which saw both the chief reporter of the Manchester Evening News and, unusually, a photographer sat on the press benches. Now, whereas I can just believe that even the dwindling resources of the MEN might have stretched to providing a reporter for this case, I find it very hard to accept that their antennae were so finely tuned as to be aware of it. This does beg the question – “Who tipped them off?” With the obvious answer being – “Whoever had the most to gain.”

Draw your own conclusions, sympathetically, of course. Or perhaps ask Phil Skegg (left), who has several mates who are journos on the MEN, sufficiently close mates to reveal the contents of the article prior to its publication. Skegg was one of the few, including Sim, his immediate family, his estranged partner and Palmer, to know the scheduling and details of the case. It is possible that the hearing was picked up solely on the basis of the court listings, but it is unlikely.

Farewell to the Dream Team
Sim’s departure from the business was immediate and abrupt, although there was a tacit understanding that he might return once everything blew over. The unwritten nature of this agreement was one that was to prove costly to Sim over the next 18 months. It wasn’t only Sim that suffered though, Love itself has become a shadow of the once-all-conquering mini-creative behemoth, which won the admiration (albeit grudgingly) of even rival agencies. Surprisingly, though, its reputation has suffered considerably less than that of Mr Sim.

Since Alistair’s departure at the end of 2008, at least 14 members of staff have quit the company (for completists that’s Richard Hall, Cheryl Borkin, Adam Rix, Simon Griffin, Rory Sutherland, Leanda Falcon, Jonny Whiteoak, Jono Brain, Ben Taylor, Adam Forthergill, Shelley Wood, Harinder Bajwa and Gre Hale). This follows on from the six who left in the three months prior to his departure (Jonathan Rigby, Andy O'Dwyer, Alison Johnson, Jon Hatton, Frank Carolan and Rob Brearley).

Add into this the earlier departure of co-founder Dave Simpson and Matt Beardsell to launch Music in January 2008 and it brings the total no of departures (including Sim himself and the company’s first ever redundancies) since Love moved from Tib Street to High Street in 2006 to a whopping 24. (To put this into perspective, rival NW design outfit, True North, lost four members of staff during the same period. True North employs 16, Love fluctuates around 30, so even doubling the TN figure to take account for this still sees Love losing three times as many staff).

Essentially, of the Dream Team that built Love’s reputation during its first eight years of existence, only Phil Skegg (now chairman) and Dave Palmer (executive creative director) remain. The relative youth and inexperience of the Dream Team’s replacements has been reflected in the agency’s lacklustre performance in terms of new business and awards, sectors where they were once unassailable, at least in NW terms.

Awards and New Business Wasteland
Where, at one time, the agency took the chairman’s award at the Roses, regularly picked up Design Week awards and pretty much swept the board at Fresh, 2009 was a disaster for the agency – nothing at all in Design Week, a couple of bronzes and silvers at the Roses and just two awards at Fresh – down from 14 the previous year. It was, without a doubt, the company’s worst ever year for awards.
2010 is shaping up to be a little better with a bronze in low budget, and a gold for illustration at the Roses – neither in categories the agency will be rejoicing over. Obviously, they’re not advertising with the Carnyx group as much as they used to.

A lean time for awards then, though it’s a comparatively rosy result compared to the company’s new business performance. Unlike a lot of other NW design companies – True North, Dinosaur, The Chase etc – Love has always been primarily project-oriented. This was fine when Sim was constantly shovelling in new business, but once the pipeline was cut, the agency faced a huge problem in meeting its considerable overheads. The problem has been compounded by the loss of work from Microsoft, the Student Travel Association, All About Food (the parent company of Nandos’ source of sauces) and its removal from the BBC roster.

The agency may also be regretting the largesse that saw it give away accounts to breakaway start-up, Music, including work for Manchester City, the Manchester International Festival, Christian Aid and the furniture manufacturer, Allermuir. It’s not all bad news though as chairman Skegg is believed to maintain an interest in the start-up, a lifeboat in waiting the cynical might say.

In truth the agency is now completely reliant on work from just two clients – Sony and Umbro, although the margins on the latter are believed to be particularly low. Some reports even suggest that Paul Chorlton, the company’s financial director, personally bailed out the business with his own funds and money from Life PR, the Ducie Street-based business he is part owner of.

It’s not all been gloom for Love though. Back in January 2009, Sarah Murray joined the company as head of new business and, just six months later, presumably after a record-breaking whirlwind romance, she was married (above) to Stephen Corlett, one of the senior marketing team at Umbro. With Corlett (Mr) now believed to be heading off to the States, it might be time for other NW design consultancies to send their most comely single account directors Cheadlewards.

The Shafting Begins
Perhaps the company’s failures on the staff and client retention, awards and new business fronts may be explained away by the fact that the attention of its remaining directors was elsewhere – largely on shafting its former MD. Much of the creativity and innovation of Messrs Skegg, Chorlton and Palmer, since November 2008, has gone into ensuring that Sim received the minimum possible payout for his shareholding in the business he built.

Under the auspices of its three directors, Love delayed posting its 2009 accounts for as long as possible. When they eventually submitted them they recorded £255k of accrued/deferred income in comparison to just £80k in the previous year (the majority of it, apparently, down to their nuptial connections at Umbro). In effect, the company deliberately held back on registering accrued income until after a compulsory sales transfer notice was served on Sim in August 2009. This allowed them to post a big loss and considerably undervalue the company.

Despite his resignation – and largely because of the outstanding issue regarding the shares – Sim had remained a director of Love until April 2009. Without his consent, however, the remaining directors had cancelled the shareholders’ dividends as of January 2009, effectively stripping Sim and his family of any income at all. So much for being “sympathetic” to all involved.

These January moves also saw the remaining management of Love renege on earlier promises that Sim would have the option of returning to the business and taking up a role in one of the company’s subsidiaries – either Toy or Make. It also saw the company officially decline to pay Sim any notice pay, potentially resulting in financial disaster for its ex-MD.

This was a very different picture to that painted by those same directors when the MEN initially broke the story back in November 2008. Back then, the directors, all mock sympathy and concern, had turned up at Sim’s house with promises to make sure he and his kids didn’t suffer, telling him he could keep his shares and that they’d carry on paying him till it all blew over.

Nothing was put in writing about this meeting but I, like a number of other figures in the industry, was in regular contact with Sim at the time and was well aware of what he had been promised and his expectation to eventually return to the business.

Dismissal Missives
Sim’s first inkling that these promises were unlikely to be kept came in a series of letters from Paul Chorlton, Love’s financial director, demanding his “official” resignation and cutting his notice period from six months to three. When Sim queried this and referred to the earlier agreement, he received a letter, just before Christmas 2008, announcing Love was initiating a dismissal procedure against him. He was eventually sacked in January 2009. At the same time the company suspended the shareholders’ dividends, whilst increasing the salaries of the remaining directors as “compensation”.

No transfer of shares was initiated until August 2009 when Sim’s 33% share in the business he had spent eight years building was valued at just £240 – largely due to the financial chicanery of FD Chorlton and co. To this day, Sim has no idea who has taken over his stake in the business and those details have yet to be recorded at Companies House, although this is a legal requirement in such a transaction. Sim still retains his original share certificate which he has understandably declined to return.

The low valuation put on the business by the triumvirate of remaining directors in August 2009 is quite at odds with the picture they painted in April of that year, when they were in negotiations with Hasgrove (parent company of the Chase, Amaze et al) about selling the business. Then they produced figures showing that Love was making £15k profit a month and valued the business at some £2 million. In the end, the deal foundered when Palmer unilaterally stopped attending meetings with Hasgrove and announced, without putting it to a vote with the other shareholders, that the deal was off.

Love for Sale
The negotiations between Love and Hasgrove were proceeding even as Sim finalized his own deal to join The Chase as business development director, a move that was announced at the end of May 2009. Had the Hasgrove/Love deal gone through, it would have seen Sim reunited with the team he had largely built up and, perhaps, resulted in a financial and creative renaissance for Love. Sadly, it was not to be.

On the brink of a financial crisis, Sim had little alternative but to rescind his resignation and take his former company to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. It is here that the waters become very muddied indeed. As part of the proceedings, Sim maintained that he had long understood – ever since the November 2008 meeting – that the directors had assured his eventual return to the business. Although many ex and current members of staff at Love also recall just such assurances about Sim’s future being made to them, the directors felt free to tell the court that this was not the case. I’m sure there’s a legal term for this.

Neither did the tribunal take into account the fact that Chris Conlan, Love’s new MD, had emailed Sim, prior to his own elevation, and told him: “All our clients and staff are supporting you and are sure you will bounce back from this.”

Chorlton (right, sans foil), Skegg and Palmer even went as far as to bring back short-lived joint MD Richard Hall (sacked several months earlier for trying to install an entirely inappropriate “Hitlerite” regime at Love’s High St offices) to ‘stick the boot’ into Sim.

Bizarrely, the legal discussion moved from whether Sim actually had brought Love into disrepute to whether he could have done by staying. It could well be argued that a truer picture would have been that, in fact, it was Sim’s departure that ultimately led to a number of staff decamping, creative standards falling and clients moving their business elsewhere.

The company offered little evidence that any client made representations about potentially moving their business in the light of Sim’s actions, but still ruled they might have done had he stayed. The one area focussed on by the tribunal was the negative publicity generated by the press coverage of Sim’s trial and sentencing.

It is impossible not to wonder if the tribunal would have been quite so sympathetic to Love had they known the role of at least two of the directors in orchestrating that negative press coverage. As well as flagging up the original court case, both the MEN and, resulting in a rare trip South of the Border, even the Drum were briefed to attend the two tribunals. How-do, which had been far more impartial in its coverage, received no such briefing.

Despite reports from normally reliable media sources and The Drum, Love did not get it all it own way, with the tribunal ruling that the company should indeed have honoured Sim’s notice payments, amounting to some 50k. To date, they have still singularly failed to meet this obligation, even six months on from the tribunal.

The End of the Affair...
Unfortunately for Sim, his months of unemployment and continuing financial commitments to his family, left him without the funds to take the matter further and challenge the valuation presented by his former colleagues Nor could he afford to take issue with the unilateral share transfer.

Following the tribunal, the information provided by Love’s financial director ensured that the company was deemed insolvent by its auditors. In order to maintain this fiction, the deferred amounts in the end-of-year accounts were continually pushed back, first to September then finally into October. Technically, during this period, the company should have gone into administration. The pressures of maintaining this distorted picture of the business and of rewriting history around the promises made to Sim prior to his resignation proved too much for some members of staff.

In the end, after eight years building the business and several months in the wilderness, Sim received nothing at from Love, whilst people who had contributed far less gave themselves pay rises and continued to kick him when he was very much down. Ultimately, it was not Sim who brought Love into disrepute.

This article is obviously one-sided, something for which I make no apology. The coverage to date – with the honourable exception of how-do, which has demonstrated a fair degree of impartiality – has been equally one-sided, albeit skewed entirely in favour of Love. This was epitomised by the ever-gutless Drum, who have seemed almost entirely in the pocket of Love – going as far at one point as to run an on-line poll asking: “Should Alastair Sim ever be allowed to work in the industry again?” They then compounded the offence by sending Alistair a whiny e-mail complaining that he had given How-do an exclusive interview but had declined to speak to them. Now why do you think that was you cottage industry clowns?

Some 18 months on from the assault that Sim himself has called his “Bonfire of the Vanities” moment, we are left with two damaged brands. Sim’s own brand, once highly-regarded in the North West and beyond, has suffered as a result of one moment of madness. The Love brand, itself, has been undermined by 18 months of mendacity, duplicity, greed, schadenfreude, incompetence, egotism and short-sightedness.

I know which one is most likely to recover.