The Amber Moment
The podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers.
The Amber Moment
Paul Burke - Part 1
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Paul is a novelist and the greatest exponent of radio advertising the world has known. In this first part of our chat, he talks about trying to get his latest book away; being "born in black and white"; realising he was a genius at five (and “becoming thicker and thicker” thereafter); winning a national writing competition; getting into adland via a bit of chutzpah and the Yellow Pages; and the brief that would change everything.
Hello and welcome to the Amber Moment, the podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howarth. With me today is Paul Burke. Paul is a writer who has had four novels published. He is also, and this is not overstating it, the world's leading exponent of radio advertising. He writes the ads as well as casting, producing, and directing them, and has won more awards for this than anyone on the planet. What's more, Paul is a wonderful guest, and it's illegal for me to run a podcast without inviting him on. Paul, thank you for being there. How are you today? I'm very well, thank you.
SPEAKER_01Very well. I just I I'm trying to get a new book. I started talking about myself immediately.
SPEAKER_02It's exactly why you're here.
SPEAKER_01Immediately. Just before I went on there, I've I've been trying to get a new book away, and um I despise the publishing industry because um we come from the world of advertising, which for all its faults, certainly when we were in it, was quite a slick. We'll get this done, we'll do that, we'll email it over, blah, blah, blah. And and they're the opposite. So I've been trying to get this book away. And I haven't I'm so out of the loop. I wrote it, sent it to my agent. She goes, This is lovely, darling, this looks really good. I have something to tell you. I've given up being an agent.
SPEAKER_00It's been a while since you've been in touch then.
SPEAKER_01And she was about the only one that I knew. So I've been looking for another one. And just as before we went on air, I've got a lovely note from somebody. This looks great. I'll read it, I'll get back to you. Because usually they they they they literally don't get back to you. You know, in life, you don't expect anyone to, you know, necessarily love what you do and be but they do have a bit of, don't they, a moral obligation just to say, no, thank you, thank you, you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, you'd hope that an agent would do so, wouldn't you? That's sort of sort of their job. I was watching I was watching a clip of Ricky Gervais in Extras and his agent, Darren Lamb. Yeah. He said, Have you been sending my script out? What script's that? The one I've sent you two months ago. Oh, is it a comedy? Is it is it funny? What do you mean you haven't read it, you know? All that. Absolutely all that. Are we allowed to know what are we allowed to know what the new book is about, by the way?
SPEAKER_01It's a cross between music journalism and self-regarding memoir. Oh, lovely. I'm done with fiction, and I thought, because there is a problem with publishing. It's um, you know, they say they don't want to hear of white, white men from a certain age, yeah, fine, whatever. But if it's my lived experience, then it's true. Yeah. And it uh non-fiction's a lot harder because with um fiction, you can just say, and Paul walked into the pub and his head exploded. Whereas I don't want you or anybody else going, you didn't do that. And to try and make it read like a novel, oh, it's taken me for ages. So I think I as you know, I have uh it's not that I don't like punk. Uh there were some great records, uh, no denying that. But I think it's been vastly, I mean, like laughably, ludicrously overvenerated. And I've I've read so many of these music memoirs by people that went on to be journalists at the NME or commissioning editors to the BBC. I was uh I was I was a geek and I was lonely and and and and then I'm I I became a punk and and and and the clash and there was Costello and I I read one more of these books, I'm gonna write one. And I wasn't a geek, I wasn't, you know, and and I like soul music and reggae and ABBA and Saturday Night Fever, like most people. Uh you've only got to look at the record charts, and so um it reflects it's not about that, but it reflects it.
SPEAKER_00So is the book written as nonfiction or or is it part it is, it is.
SPEAKER_01No, I could because um remember Britton and mine, I said, Oh god, you'd have loved my flat in Tilburn because I had two bedrooms, one I slept in, one had a spare room in case you wanted to come and stay, but in it was proper professional DJ Dex mixers, massive great speakers, and about 6,000 old records. And anyone who ever came in there, male or female, would go, I'd rather go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so I've taken one uh single out of all my boxes and just constructed one chapter around that. Oh yeah. Linked them together for one continuous narrative.
SPEAKER_00Great idea.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, it's it's either who the hell are you and we're not interested, or it's a memoir for the masses. Everyone will understand. Not everyone, do you know what I mean? A lot of people have had that experience, so we'll see.
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe over the next half hour or so, we'll just get a sort of a sneak preview of what we might find in that forthcoming book. Because as I think you know, what I'm trying to do here on the amber moment is something that you know how to do very well, which is tell great stories. And every story has its beginnings somewhere, and every hero of every story, that is you for today, of course, just for the terms of all clarity. It always is has has his or her own origin story. So I'd love it if you could start by telling us a bit about your background, your childhood, my childhood, your upbringing, your education, any and any early influences.
SPEAKER_01I was um I was born, I can't remember this, obviously. I was I was born apparently without a midwife on my own, yeah, in the back bedroom, the little house in Crookerwood. And um I mean it was it was called the midwife. I think I was born in black and white. Uh and by the time the the midwife got there, apparently I was out, and you know, I was my mum's fourth child uh of five. I've got four sisters and three older, one younger, and I've never been so grateful for anything the more I go on, the more I think about it. It's a double-edged sword. I mean, you've known me a long time. I am not and never have been remotely shy with women. I don't mean confident, hey baby, fancy a drink. Just sort of talking to them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because they're not in inverted colonies women, they're the people I grew up with. Because it wasn't just my sisters, all their friends used to come around. Yeah. So I was just used to being surrounded by girls. And the only trouble is, is that I mean, you know, we're going back a few years. If a woman ever found me remotely attractive, I'd go, What? Sorry. Really? So could you just sign here, please? Because I was so used to my sisters who love me and I love them. Look at the state of you. You're not going to look at you, look at him, mum, you're going out like that. And so so that's that's how it was. I was brought up in in quite a female household. Yeah. But my school, my primary school was lovely, and that then I passed the 11 plus. Um because I honestly, when I was about five, I was a genius, and I just got thicker and thicker. Tell us about being a genius at five. I was a genius. I and I could read, write, tell the time. I found it so easy. I just used to wander around the class and and and they used to um put me out in the playground because I was disruptive. I don't mean horrible, I just mean because it was easy. And I just used to run around the playground for five minutes and then put me back. And of course, I was so used to knowing everything. Yeah. I'm I'm talking about when I was five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But um I I just think that set the tone for it, really. And it's interesting that um I ended up making a difference from writing, the thing I could do when I was five, and I haven't really learnt anything else. But I I did pass the 11 plus round and I went to this school called Salvatorium in Harrow, and people came from all over. They came from Kilburn and Wembley and Cricklewood, where I was, and Kingsbury, right out to Watford. And I thought, because they wore green blazers, that I was going to a like a public school. And when I get there, yeah, there were some sort of nerdy people, but there were an equal number of absolute thugs. You know, it was like a holding pen for them until they were released onto the nearest building site. And that they were sort of, you know, they were active members of the Cockney Rebs or Cockney Rebs, you know, the United Firm and Spurs. And it was years before I realised why. You think I thought of all the thuggy ones, admittedly they wouldn't hurt you, you know, but they resolved as nails. And then you thought of the thuggy ones, you know, Nikki McDonough and and Johnny Walsh. And you think, but probably listening to this with greatest respect, they probably didn't pass their 11 plus. Then I thought of the other ones. But I thought, sorry, I thought of the fact they had older brothers. You think, oh, we was quite normally probably doing. So what happened is if you passed your 11 plus to go to that school, you passed it not just for you, but for any younger brothers you might have, because they had this sibling policy. Yeah. And so the score was 25% Harry Potter, 25% Vinnie Jones, and 50% of us somewhere in the middle. But who did I gravitate to, of course? The thugs. Uh so I went to school there, and then in the sixth form, we got it was a terrible thing. They just closed all the in the London borough of Harrow, they shut down all the sixth forms, and we were sent to a brand new sixth form college called St. Dominic. And oh, it's all lovely now, it's been lovely for 30, 40 years. When we went in there, it literally wasn't built. Oh god. We used to get sent home. This is halfway through RA levels. So lower six, all fine, all doing nicely. Yeah. We had new teachers, we used to get sent home. I never went to school, and I just remember one teacher saying, Oh, hey, I'm Mr. Wilson, but hey, call me Tony.
SPEAKER_00And you just think you were taught by Tony Wilson.
SPEAKER_01And and and the moment this bloke said call me Tony, you think it's all over, isn't it? Yeah. You know. Really? And so I didn't go to school. And I didn't get any A-levels. And I didn't really know what I could do because the building trade wasn't really open to me because I I'm like comically clumsy. I would have drilled through a power cable, fallen off a roof, ask anyone. It's it's like, you know, just so I couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that you that you think you would have gone down that route though, had you been vaguely adept at that stuff?
SPEAKER_01No, because I've always had illusions of grandeur, ideas above my station. Um, if you'd have seen me back in those days when I was about 18, I'd been called to ah, I guess look at her, she's all right, and she worked. And in my head, I'm going, You ghastly people, one day I shall escape you all. Uh but I didn't quite know how. Yeah. And advertising. I've told this before, but it doesn't hurt, does it? Someone came around from our school. I wanted to be a journalist.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And someone came around because it again, it was the only thing I could still do. You could get a job writing, you couldn't get a job doing a five times table, and that's pretty much. I mean, I was sort of average at things like history and geography. I wasn't I wasn't an embarrassment. Science, I was so bad that they I just couldn't understand it. I still don't really know what physics is. So I was the only boy in the year who was excused doing a science O level was a waste of time. I was actually quite good at languages, and I got an A for French because I found it easy. But then French A, they said, well, you'll do French A level, and you're going to have, but I've got to go and live in France. I've got to do French literature, and I don't even like English literature. So I I just had no idea what I was going to do. And and this guy came around from an appetite housing. Remember you when I first met you? Yeah. Young, smart, handsome, articulate.
SPEAKER_00Those are the days.
SPEAKER_01It was it was that kind of bloke comes around. You know, very nice, very I don't I don't mean slick in a bad way, I mean slick in a good way. And he said, Who's heard of Sarchy and Sarch? Should we all put our hands up? Because everyone heard of Sarchy. List of one. Yeah. I I again I still think that's the only agency most people have ever heard of. Yeah, agreed. And he said, There's lots of those places. So I got the yellow page up and I got home first one, Abbott Mead and Vickers. Didn't know who this didn't know who David Abbott was. Anyone listening? Uh probably the greatest advertising person this country has ever produced. Hello, can I speak to Mr. Abbott, please? What's that? Cut a long story short, bit late, but um they were looking for a runner. I got a job as a runner, I was the most junior person in the entire industry. And I the moment I got there, I loved it. Yeah. Um I was in what they call traffic and production because there was no internet. So if you just have to get the ads out of the newspapers, I was always running around Soho or down in Fleet Street. And the people who were in traffic and production, for want of a better word, they weren't mind me saying this, they were quite common. You know, that they they weren't university educated like the account handlers or arty like the creative department. They were really they were smart, don't get me wrong, sharp enough to shave with, but they were um they were SX boys and that and and of course I was instantly at home because they were like my cousins, you know, and my family. And I loved it. And and they were when I wanted to be a copywriter, they were very kind. See what happened, I mean, again, this has been discussed before. The one thing I was good at top the class every year was English, English language. Yeah. Wasn't that bothered with English lit. You know, and English literature, it turns out, was only a subject, it was only a thing from about 1900, and they made it deliberately sort of hard so that it didn't look easy compared with um Latin and ancient Greek. So I was very good at English language, but after O-level, you can't do that anymore. Yeah, you can't you have to study literature. So it sort of turned me, whereas I was great at writing stories, and I won I won a prize from Cadbury's for some nationwide story competition.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a year's supply of Cadbury's or something.
SPEAKER_01I run this tin, and you couldn't get it in the shops, big, big tin, and it had every Cadbury's product in it. It was really like a special commemorative thing. Yeah, and of course, my mum was very proud. And I there's two things she I either wanted to look at it forever or eat it all. Yeah, and what happened was the worst of both worlds. My mum would say, because our house was always full of people. My mum was one of nine kids. They all lived locally just off the Edgeware Road. I mean, they they all got pushed out to Essex and places like that. But when I was a child, also not on my dad's side, but through my dad, who was the most devout Irish Catholic person you ever met. He used to be a my dad used to be a monk. Uh he was a monk. Uh obviously he didn't take his final vow, so I won't be here, but that's how religious he was. Yeah. And so we had we had my mum's lot, thieves and vagabonds, and then we had all the Irish food from the Catholic Church. So my house was never ever empty. So every time everyone came anyone came round, yeah. Oh, show them your tin. Which uh I mean, I was lucky to escape with a finger of fudge. I mean what was the story about? Um it was called The Ming, the Ming Lionaire. Oh, and it was about this joke who I mean this is the ignorance of a child. He picks up a vase in an antique shop, and it's got Ming stamps on the bottom of it, and he thinks I've got a Ming vase, and he's you know, he's ordering his his new Rolls-Royce and he's gonna buy a house in the Bishop's Avenue, and then he uh he sees an another one in a somewhere else in a jump shop, and he turns that one over and it's got made in burr ming ham. How old were you when you wrote this? About nine? I mean, and and and I won. And so I got this thing. So that's what I was always good at. But by the time I was 18, the time I was 20, I I had no facility for that anymore. It had gone. It rusted away. But when I got to this advertising agency, and I've been there a couple of years, uh, I took a great interest in um in the writing. And I thought this kind of writing I might be able to do. I'm never gonna write. I thought, never gonna write novels, but I could probably write as and it was almost like as I read this copy, because in that place were some of the greatest copywriters who ever lived, even in a small agency. There was David Abbott, Richard Foster, Chris O'Shea, David Rossinger. Brilliant, brilliant, John Kelly, brilliant people. And gradually it was almost like somebody spraying a little bit of WD 40 on my rusted caliber. And it gradually sort of stopped going again, like an old lawnmower. And eventually I became a copywriter and went to another agency.
SPEAKER_00But how did that happen though? Because you you've sort of cheeked your way in there by calling up David Abbott and you've got a job as a runner and you're working in traffic and production. How does that then give us a little potted history of the other thing?
SPEAKER_01Well, they used to tell me I used to get the job of writing the um letters of complaint to the magazines. Because sometimes a magazine it would be printed and it'd just all be wrong, it'd be it'd all be badly reproduced. And there was one, it's the Radio Times. I always remember to write to a vlog called Harry Penman. I always thought I'd writing to a man called Penman. Yeah. Dear Harry, it was for Sunsbury's white wine, and it was yellow. It came out really bad. They put too much yellow in it, and it looked like cat's piss. And I said, Look, it's all yellow. They'll wonder how we got the cat to sit on the bottle. And um someone saw it on the printer, you write that. Yeah. And then they kept saying, Yeah, you should try and be a writer. And and I remember saying, I didn't like genuinely didn't, you know, I didn't read much as a child. I used to write, and and I suppose this is the time I wrote this thing and I won this competition. This is the time when I say yes, and I love reading swallows and amazons and Huckle, but I didn't I didn't read anything, read the Argus dialogue.
SPEAKER_00Record sleeve notes, presumably.
SPEAKER_01Record sleeve, yes. No, weirdly, I did read a lot of magazines because the one thing my dad did is every Sunday after mass, he bought the Sunday Times and read it. And so if I wanted to read anything, it was the Sunday Times. And my friend Brian Jones, who's just puts his finger in, he goes, Well, there you go then. You've got your football results from the Sunday Times, I got mine from the Sunday Mirror. And and I I love the Sunday Times magazine because uh it was it was quite a thing back then, you know. And so I said, I could never do this. But what they used to have was a thing called the DNA D evening, and where a senior creative team would stay behind after work, they'd set a brief the week before, and all the young students from the art colleges and the advertising colleges would come and have their work critiqued. And Richard Foster and John Horton of the senior team who were doing it, so we're doing it tonight. Why don't you come? I said, What do you mean? Come on, I've never written an ad, I haven't seen the rest. Look, and I mean Richard, just come in, sit down, shut up, and just don't say anything, yeah, and just watch, you'll enjoy it. And I did, because I've never seen work being critiqued, and you know, they'd say this one's great, this one's not so good. But if you change that, and and I was watching this and enjoying it, and then you know, about eight o'clock we go home, and on my way out the door, Richard Foster pretended he didn't know me. He said, excuse me, well, you've forgotten your brief for next week. So I had to get on had to go I had to, didn't I? I got on the course and I can't thank him enough for doing that. Wow. So I blacked my way onto that course, and and then gradually I got a book together. I mean, I'm like everyone else, I always pretend I did no work. It's like people like you who went to Cambridge, oh I did no work. Of course you did, you must have done because it was such a high standard. So I always go, Yeah, I just blagged it, I did this. I must have worked quite hard to get a portfolio together. And I did, and eventually I got a job at a big agent school, Young and Rubikan. And then then I was a writer uh I was a professional writer who seldom read a book.
SPEAKER_00How important was that to go to a different place to establish yourself as a writer? Well, they were the ones who told me that.
SPEAKER_01They said if you stay here, yeah, they'll keep giving you packages for EC4. So uh so I was able to go in there. And the lovely thing is, because I I I remember thinking this before I discussed it many times, people from my background who go straight from art college into a creative department, and advertising agencies in the 80s were really flash, and you go to posh restaurants and you know, really cool offices in Covent Garden or Soho, and they find it really intimidating. But I I'd already had four years in an agency with the common people. So time I went to a creative department, I knew what was coming, I knew what it was all about, and so I never had that insecurity. And again, I thought, and you get your first brief, oh my god, it's my first brief. I won't be able to do it after all this, but you can, you know, you can. And then I had to start to read because the creative director there was a bloke called Chris Wilkins, who was delightful, very smart, very funny. And there was a long-standing TV campaign for Professor Original with Jeeves and Worcester. And of course I knew who Jeeves and Worcester were. He was on holiday and he said, I want you to write a few scripts. I'm like, Oh shit. And he knew, and he handed me the house book. Read this, called Wat Ho Jeeves or something. Yeah. And I thought, better read it. Oh god, it's a proper book. And I found I loved it. You know, it was laugh out loud, funny, immaculate use of the English language. Yeah. And from then on I wasn't really I think you learned to read twice in your life. You know, once when you're a child, you literally learn to read age five, and then you learn as an adult. And the thought of reading for pleasure had never been a thing for me. You know, reading was something you had to do for school. But then I again I think reading the Sunday Times every single week from when I was about five was probably quite good.
SPEAKER_00So that that Woodhouse experience at that point then, did did that sort of lead you to enjoy literature more? Did you did you go and explore other things on the back of that?
SPEAKER_01Uh not not that much, but um when new books came out, you know, when I was Martin Amos and Julian Barnes and things I would never have looked at had I remained in the traffic department playing golf in Essex, I probably wouldn't have done that. But um, but I did and I and I found I liked it. And if you want to write, you have to read. Yeah. I come out with some platitudes, and I here's the first one.
SPEAKER_00Happy, happy to happy for you to trot that out, no problem. But when you think back to those early days in advertising portn, and and you you got in in a quite rather cheeky way, as I say there. Um I'd love to say I'd love to say didn't even know you were doing so, but no, no, I'd love to say, Oh, I was really cheeky and go on you.
SPEAKER_01I have no idea. I was mortified. I didn't know that I'd I've and also people said, Oh, you must have been so driven. And I'm going, No, the van I they gave me was driven.
SPEAKER_00But I'm by you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, by me. And I was gonna be a black cab driver, I was quite happy with that. But no, I wasn't, I didn't go in there with a you know a cunning plan to become a copywriter.
SPEAKER_00But in those early days then, yeah, sure, okay. But were you aware of having something like a plan or that? What what you set out to achieve? Or why why were you doing what you did then at that point? In the traffic and production department? No, as as as you well, your your early days in advertising that include your becoming a writer. Oh, it was just a job.
SPEAKER_01I came home and said, Mum, I got a job, good. Right, that's great. Um, the moment I got there, I just loved the whole pizzazz of advertising.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so I was very happy in there. And I I I had no great ambitions apart from the fact that when I got I've been doing traffic and production for a while, I found I didn't really want to progress in that. And there's other things I perhaps could have done. I certainly could have done TV production because they they asked me to help out with that. But um, no, I I I loved I loved um good copywriting and I was surrounded by it, I was immersed in it, you know. I know that thing they say see it and you can be it, which is nonsense, because I've seen my cousin Peter, who's a plasterer, do plastering. I've seen Olympic gymnasts. You can't, but if you have the vaguest interest in writing and that kind of short-form writing, that concision of thought, that wit, those headlines, and you like that and you're surrounded by it every day, yeah, it it does, and it should rub off on you. And so it did. And once I became a copywriter, I thought, oh, this is uh I don't mean this is my life, but this is what this is what I do for a living now. This is what I like. And and I I still do.
SPEAKER_00And and give us give us some uh as your career is progressing, you're progressing, presumably, you're gaining a bit of senior seniority, etc. Um, moving from agency to agency a little bit, I guess. Just give us a few of your kind of career highlights and and kind of famous things that you've been responsible for.
SPEAKER_01Well, Y and R, Young and Rubicum, wasn't it it was perfectly all right, but it wasn't a good, famous creative agency. And in order to do famous award-winning work, you've got a much better chance if you get into a good one. And eventually a few years later, I pitched up at BMP where I met you, and that was a good one. You're either a work person or a career person, and I'm a work person. And they s they say, I don't know who says, but they say that um career people spend 25% of their time on their job and 75% on their career. And I I never did that. I just thought sometimes naively, if you do nice work and you're a nice person, that should be enough, and it sort of is. So I never had a plan. There are agencies I always like to work at, and sometimes I would approach them, other times people would approach me, or headhunters, but I never really had a plan. I never wanted I never wanted any power, I never wanted any influence, never wanted to be a creative director or group head. And I did go to BMP and I had a very good time there, but um the people there they were better than me, they still are. Some of these little I mean I'll name them. I mean, you've got John Webster, you've got Frank Budgeon, you've got Tony Davison, Nick Gill, Tim Riley, Kim Patworth. Um I I better stop Richard Flint and Andy McLeod. If if if I don't stop now, I'll name everyone apart from a couple of but really, really good people. And I thought, not that I'm rubbish, but I don't think I'm as good as these people at this thing. But I bet I can do radio better than any of you. Um because a lot of copywriters are trained at art college, so radio has no visual content whatsoever, and they don't really do it, and they don't want to, and I sort of don't blame them. So I just thought, don't be the best, be the only. And if I'm the only one who does this, not literally the only one, but if I if if I'm the one who specialized in it and and likes it, and I've always liked it because radio is or was the nearest advertising got to show business. You know, people would turn up for radio, like Stephen Fry, you know, they'd name any famous actor and I'd probably work with them. Yeah. And because they'll turn up because it's radio, it's easy, I wouldn't say it's easy, but they don't have to have hair and makeup, they're not being filmed. There's not a lot of money at stake. Very often they can, you know, I would always say, if I wanted someone and I was flexible on time, I'll just say, look, um, just what what Daisy in the West End anyway? Who need like a couple of grand before he gets on the cheap home? Yeah. And that makes it sound good. I got Michael Kane in once. Oh, yeah. Um go on Michael Kane for the London Transport. And they weren't great commercials, but I just thought it's getting Michael Kane. Jubilee line extension in Bernsey. So I'll write in this note. I'd I'll send you the fax that I sent to him. It said, Um, dear Michael, I know you don't normally do this, but obviously I said we'll we'll give um uh large donation to your favourite charity. Yeah, blah blah blah. Could you we're quite fair on time, we'll be recording soho in the next two or three weeks. It'd be bring great prestige if you could do it. Uh please say yes, otherwise I'll have to phone Max Bygraves. And he said, just because I thought I put that, he came along. And he sort of struggled a bit because he's a great screen actor.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you know, and he at the end he said, I quite enjoy that. I've never I've never I've never done radio plays, and you know. And did you say yeah, it shows yeah, don't look at me. No good looking at me like that. No one can see you, you know. No, so I mean, career highlights because I'm so shallow, was meeting um was meeting lots and lots of people I admire.
SPEAKER_00And um but some of the work that you didn't, and not just in radio in this phase of your career, I suppose, were was really famous campaigns, weren't they? Do you want to just throw a couple of those?
SPEAKER_01Um, I I I did a lot of the Barclay card ads with Ryan Atkinson. Lots of those. And yeah, because I remember meeting him and thinking, Oh my god, it's Ryan Atkinson. I remember thinking, You're a sort of multimillionaire comic genius, we'll write these together. He wasn't really a writer, okay. He was a very, very good editor and and very aware of what what was funny. And very often he'd say, Well, I don't need to say that, and he'd just pull a stupid face. I'll just and he'd do that thing where he raises one eyebrow really high. Yeah, and you'd go, that's so much funnier, you know. And and um then we did um I did it with you, Mrs. Merton and Malcolm with Carolina Hearn, yeah, and Craig Cash. And Craig had never acted before, and we made him act for British Gas. For British Gas, yeah. Uh I did uh well, we all did PG tips, didn't we? Someone said, Did you invent them? How old do you think I am? Started out in 1963. Mr. Shifter. Yeah, we we yeah, they all think you did that one, but no, we but then I I remember approaching those, do them like a radio uh just give them names, their characters, the dad's call, I can't remember his name now, the mum's called Shirley, the dad's called this, but they just happened to be played by chimps. But they weren't really, they were played by Caroline Quentin, uh, somebody else. And that was the oh my god, that was the best thing in the world. I shouldn't really say this, but um they they were filmed in Italy, yeah. And then the next batch I did were filmed in LA. And it would never happen now. This was the 90s, it was such a jolly yeah, uh, because you couldn't do any work if you wanted to. You just go in and go, Oh, there's some chimps there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they said, Did you want to hold one? I don't really like animals. I wouldn't I love children, I love kids, but I don't like animals. And you could I remember holding this baby chimp, and you they they they're lethal. Maybe not the babies, but the the full-size ones would not tear your arm off, and you could sort of feel it even with this baby, and I'm going, I don't want to hold it. Yeah, yeah. So the work came when you put it together uh on the way home. But we used to go to Rome, it was beautiful, uh, Los Angeles, Santa Monica. But that was a reward for all the hard work you did. But about that time, sort of before that, I I worked on The Guardian.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they said, We love your, you know, I the attitude said, I like I like the radio commercials you did. We have a column called Reputations, where if something's perceived to be good, you say why it's bad. Something's perceived to be bad, you say why it's good. He said, Would you like to have a crack at that? It was Alan Rossbridger. And I said, Yeah, all right. And then he rang me and said, Would you go up and see the editor of The Guardian in Manchester? And I went up there and they offered me a job as a a journalist on The Guardian. Did they? But I'd have to live in Manchester. I wasn't earning a fortune, but it was like half what I was earning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm very attached to London. I've never lived outside the North Circular. Uh my dad wasn't well. I mean, my dad, my dad was ill from when I was about nine. Um, what had happened before I was born was he went to hospital with appendicitis, and they gave him too much anesthetic in Wilson General, and he was dead, like literally dead. Uh and so they had wired him up to the national grid, walked him back to life, right? And um he was fine, but they said this may cause heart problems in later life. Yeah, and sure enough, when I was about nine, he had a series of heart attacks. And oh, you know, he was he was ill. We lived on benefits, we had free preschool meals, free. I mean, it's I'm still yet to meet anyone of my own age who was poorer than I was as a child. I remember something my daughter saying to me, because you know what she's like, she goes, Well, who did you play with, Dad? Charles Dickens. I mean, it was it really was like proper poverty. And I I remember my sister Caroline and I, we we had that sort of background of sort of love and neglect, and we were just setting up to Wembley Arena or Wembley Empire Pool to go and see Disney on Parade. And Disney on Parade was huge, every child in London wanted to see that because people, even people with money, didn't go to Disneyland in Florida, it just wasn't a thing. And Disney on Parade, you imagine it was just like Disneyland comes to Wembley Arena, and we go there. As soon as we get there, we give them hands of Fanta. Um I'm about 10 and Caroline's about seven, and we've got these sticky books and packets of Opal Fruits, and so I go to school, so it's great they give you oatbal fruits and banter and sticker books, it's so brilliant. And people in my class went, so we didn't get any sticker books, and I had to bring it in because no one believed me. And I realised that I'd gone to the London Borough of Brent's underprivileged children. So that's so um so my dad was always ill, not the whole time. He'd go back to work and he'd come back and forth, and you know, but and that was what I'm saying is that was when I was nine. Yeah, he didn't die till I was 31, right? So I didn't want to go and live in Manchester when he was ill. So so I know so I never went. I'm so glad I I couldn't anything worse than being because the Guardian men was um, you know, there's a Tory government, and they presented a really sort of credible alternative and you know, different way of looking at things, and and and their lifestyle things and their film reviews absolutely brilliant. Now I just find it the Daily Mail in reverse, you know, sort of laughably shit. So I'm so glad I never did that.
SPEAKER_00But a nice offer to get at the time.
SPEAKER_01Very nice, yeah, very flattering, but um, I don't regret that.
SPEAKER_00You stay in your advertising career. I want to hear a bit more about this because it's and I've never really noticed this about you before. I mean, many people know you for your radio advertising expertise, and as I say, the most awarded person in the world. In the world. In the world for radio advertising, which is an incredible feat, really.
SPEAKER_01Well, the thing is, that that's never that's never going to be broken because they don't have those awards anymore, the aerials and the from Alan Shearer at the premier.
SPEAKER_00You like well, you like Brazil in 1970, you get to keep the cup. I'm keeping the cup, yeah, that's it, it's all over. But the point I wanted to ask you a bit more about, Paul, is is what sounds like a fairly deliberate decision to specialise in that. Yes. I I just assumed you'd you'd drifted into it and and you obviously had a great facility for it. But it sounds like you were quite in the night, you're quite calculating about it.
SPEAKER_01No, I'll tell you one is I go to BMP, and this might not mean anything to anyone, but uh at the time BMP was a great agency, always was, and they merged with an agency called Davidson Pierce, which wasn't very good creatively. And uh I I got into I was so lucky to get into BMP. I got phoned up by a guy called Patrick Collister, and he was at BMP. And the Davidson Pierce people weren't really wanted, but uh it it you could see both sides of it. Um the people at BMP were really good and worked really hard to be there, and it was a very prestigious place to go. Davison Pierce, not so much. It wasn't their fault, they got merged in with this good agency, but they I think they were on a lot more money and they weren't they hadn't won the awards, the BMP. Anyway, this um girl called Sue was an art director who had worked at Davis and Pierce who's from from that side, and I was brought in and paired with her. So I was on the Davis and Pierce side, even though I've never actually worked there. Right. And what happened was we used to do all this shit work, and because I've been in traffic and production with all the Harry Rednaps, there was a guy not unlike Harry Rednapp called Keith Sands. Oh, lovely Keith. Lovely Keith Sands. Of course I knew, because we all knew each other, traffic people. So Keith, you know, we're gonna get any work, you know, any proper work. I've come to BMP, what's going on? I feel like I've on the other side of the Berlin Wall. So he said, um, he said, Well, there's this Guardian thing, radio. It's quite hard. It's it's one, you've got to do one commercial, it's a different one every single day. I said, I'll do that. I like doing radio, I've done it before. And he said, Well, it's in Frank Budgeon's group, which was the BMP side. He goes, I'll ask Frank. So he goes and asks Frank. Frank he said, he said, No, Frank, it's the guardian, it's there, the prestigious, prestigious account. Frank wants to keep it in his group. And I said, not in a stroppy way, or in an old does he. So I go round there. Quite nice, Dad. I said, Are you Frank budgeting? And you remember Frank, and he's a genius, uh very quiet, and I said, Look, I'm from the other side of the burning wall. I'm the one who wanted to do that brief. But I understand what you're saying. I've done some radio. If I bring my cassette in tomorrow and you listen to it and you like it, can I do that brief? He goes, Okay. And so he played it, and he goes, now this is good. Okay, you can do it.
SPEAKER_00To find out what happened next for Paul and to hear about his Jaguar XJR and how being a lapsed Catholic helped him towards a literary career. Tune in next time to the Amber Moment. Until then, stay amber.