The Amber Moment
The podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers.
The Amber Moment
Paul Burke - Part 2
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The second half of my chat with author and radio advertising legend Paul. Here he talks about a lucrative career move that didn't quite work; the happiest time of his ad career as THE radio guy at the agency; the terror of a two-book deal; having a "memory like a stalker"; writing as a mechanical process; bad business language; and "full-time job syndrome".
Hello, and welcome to the Over Moment, the podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howard. This is the second part of my conversation with author and radio advertising legend Paul Burke. So far, we've heard about how Paul was, to use his phrase, born in black and white and was surrounded by women at home. We've heard about him winning a national story competition run by Cadbury, and we've heard about his early years in advertising, first as a runner and then as a copywriter. We rejoined Paul now as he's about to make an appeal to a creative director.
SPEAKER_00So I go round there. Quite nice, though. I said, Are you Frank budging? And you remember Frank, and he's a genius. But very quiet. And I said, Look, I'm from the other side of the Berlin 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, No, this is good. Okay, you can do it. So I'd do it. So I do this one a day. And Frank was very elusive, could never get old of him. And I just used to um you you get these story facts over, and then I'd write the commercial at four o'clock, record it, and then it had to be rushed around to Capitol Radio or wherever it was the next day. Uh sorry, uh to go on the air the next day. Yeah. And then what happened was B MP merged with another agency, a good agency called DDB. And when that happened, they fired every single person on the Jason Pierce side. And my art director, Sue, went in, gets fired, comes out in tears, and they said, I want to see you now. And so I I went in, sort of racing myself to get fired, and they said, Look, we're smiling, we'd like to keep you. Frank says you're good at the radio. And it wasn't calculating. I always think Sue thought I did that because I knew what was going on, but I didn't. So once I got a name for doing that, they kept giving it to me. And the more they gave it to me, more the more I liked it. Yeah. So I kept doing it. Because it's the purest form of writing, you know. I loved it.
SPEAKER_01Terrific. And what tell us a bit about the sort of second half, I guess, of your of your advertising career and how that eventually took you to writing books and books and novels.
SPEAKER_00Well, but what happened not long after that is I got offered a job at Jay Walter Thompson for a colossal amount of money. And that's after I'd done prop, you know, I've done all this radio and I've talked about blood bit and the moment I do British gas and partly car, and suddenly I'm offered a big, big job. And I've always lived by the thing that you go to any job, any job for in this order, the work, the people, the money. The work, the people, the money. And I went for the money. And um because it was too much to turn down. It was it was almost irresponsible, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh my second child was on the way, and so I go there, and there's nothing wrong with it. Uh, they were really nice, it just wasn't my kind of place. It was quite bureaucratic, and and I was uh the worst kind of creative director you could possibly have. I'm not interested. I don't, I'm not interested. And I was sitting in meetings, and oh my god, and I just didn't like it. And I remember they said, Oh, you're the new boy, we're gonna give you the new kit cat television brief. I went, oh great. And they they said, Well, what we do is we have what we like to call a day one. And I said, What's that then? And they said, Well, we go off to a to a hotel somehow by the M2. You know, I said, Who? It's well, the planner and the account director and the senior client, and then we would discuss the brief. And I said, Is it have a break up a kit cat? Yes. Is there a new product or is that is it that Kit Kat that we have? I said, Look, seriously, I don't need to come to a day one, I'll just keep writing scripts, yeah, and you can tell me their shit, and I'll keep writing until you get good ones. And I came back to BMP for someone's leaving do, yeah, larging it up because I had a jag. I was on the jag. I had a jaguar XJR. I mean it was a fabulous car. Because I was on the Jaguar Cat and they gave me a jag. And once I'd gone around to my mum's, I don't know about you, but I often play my life as a movie. And I drove a drove back around the streets of Cricklewood where I was as a child in me jagged, expecting these sort of little urchins to come out, and I put money, and I was sort of driving around that, and then uh I remember taking my mum to Sainsbury's in Top of Labor Grove for a couple of times, and after that I was fed up in me Jag. I felt I felt a bit of a pratt. And also that kind of money, I didn't deserve it. I'm not being over humble and Catholic, I wasn't worth it. And if they lost a big account, quite rightly they would look nice and I'd be out. So I thought I was dumb. And I go to this leaving, I can't remember whose it was, Mag, large in it up in there, and Webster whispers in my ear, he didn't know anything, he just, if you want to come back, ring me tomorrow. He did speak like that. I rang him, he said, Yeah, they can't get the radio down. So I came back then on the proviso that I worked by myself, yeah, and I only did the radio and I did all of it. And that was my favourite time of my entire career. But during that time, I always fancied writing a book, and I always had this idea because I was I had the North London Catholic Irish background, and I'd stand at mass thinking it was almost once I discovered what sex was and what a virgin meant. And I thought, well, I've never known you've got to do that sex thing to have a baby, and I've never known that anyone die, then come back three days later. I don't think this is true, and if I think that and I'm nine, what does the priest think? And I always had this idea in my head, yeah. And I'd gone on holiday from BMP when it was still quite a thing to borrow a laptop, and I'm on holiday and I had a run at this about a priest who doesn't believe in God, and I couldn't quite get it together. I quite liked it, it it was better than I thought. But I thought I need something, and then after I got back, we went to New York to do Budweiser Razor commercials, and in New York I just saw these ads that on the 21st of June, wherever it was, all the yellow cab drivers were giving some of their money to children's charities. I thought, I've got it, I've got it, I've got a vehicle, literally got a vehicle for this priest. He's going to drive a taxi because I wanted to be a taxi driver, and my cousin is tax, so I knew all about it. And um I thought, right, he's gonna drive a taxi to raise funds. And once I had that, I knew I had it. And then I'm away on a shoot with Butley, Stuart, my erstwhile partner, and and I get a I get a call from my agent, darling. I've got you a two-book deal. I went, two? What do you mean, two? I don't know any more things. She goes, Oh, darling, you must. You must. Uh, had lunch with me at the Groucho, this is true. Yeah. And she goes, I said, Look, I'm not a Holocaust survivor. I wasn't brought up by wolves. I I lit I left school. Three days after I left school, I went to work and advertising. I still do. I was born in London without a midwife, and I live about three or four miles from where I was born. I've got nothing. She goes, You must have. And I went, I haven't. She goes, What about your school? So I told her about this brutal school I went to. Then I also told her about how we worked in a cinema and I used to steal so much money. And you'd think I mean what we used to do was simple expedients. One was um not tearing both the tickets, used to tear them, put one untorn ticket into your pocket. So I did it once by accident. You know when you do something by accident? Yeah, yeah. By the time I accidentally nicked a yogurt from Sainsbury's from Tesco, and it genuinely was just stuffed down the corner of the trolley. I thought, oh, if I don't do that by accident, I can do that deliberately. I'd done this ticket by accident, and I had to take it back to read. I thought I could do this deliberately, and so I was doing it deliberately. And on a busy night, you'd get 1200 people coming in and you don't have to do it about 20 times out of that, which is nothing. And then the other thing we used to do was um if you had a hundred coke cups, Pepsi, at the beginning of the evening, and 50 at the end, you should have the money in the till for 50 coke cups. We just used to wash up the cups that they'd left in the cinema and put them back. How did the untorn tickets result?
SPEAKER_01How did it work? Mr. Naive here, you've you've not torn the ticket, you recycled the tickets amount.
SPEAKER_00But do you do you remember how they came out in a strip? Yeah. Uh even you can and and you fold I'm doing the actions legend on on a podcast, which is sort of pointless. You'd fold them in half, giving back two halves of the tickets. Fold them in half. If you quickly put one in your pocket unturned, giving back two halves of the same ticket, yeah. Same. No, nobody care, but you still had one that you could resell at the cash desk.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. So that Ford Capri I had when I was at school was solely down nicked in increments. Nicked in increments, it was. But you would think, because actually, I'm I'm not criminally minded. I was I had I had been violin time so poor as a child that this didn't make me first steps to being a billionaire. I just wanted some money to buy a car. Because again in London, you brought up in London, especially then, you had to have a bit of hustle about you. No. You know, you had to have you had to have the gear and you know, you just did. Because and I've often thought that if you're brought up in London, everyone comes to your city to not literally, but sort of take you on and take your jobs. And if you're gonna if you're gonna hold on to that, you've got to have something about you. Otherwise, you get shoved out to Luton. When will we loot them or late and buzzed nothing? When we're late and buzzed, but if you want to retain your place in London, so that's what I was like, and I just wanted some money. And once I'd got some money, once I started at Abbottmead Vickers, then that was probably it was a cutting real earnings from a part-time job at the cinema. But that was it, I didn't need to do it anymore.
SPEAKER_01So you were telling what you were telling us before about you you're in the I think what you said was the most enjoyable phase of your advertising. Oh, yeah. And then you get this two-book deal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I got a two-book deal. What happened? I think when you do two books, you can do more than two. If you've done a second one, I was frightened about doing and also I didn't enjoy doing the second one quite so much because the first one well, I enjoyed it not quite so much on the one hand, and I enjoyed it more on the other hand, because the first one was just purely on spec. It was my idea to write a book. After that, I was under contract, and it was their idea for me to write a book. Yeah, but on the other hand, it meant I was a proper professional author, and I saw my books on the front table at Daunts and at Waterstones. But then what what you discover, and I didn't know at the time, I just got incredibly lucky, is that 97% of people whose books you see on the table in Waterstones do something else for a living. And people often think I wrote that book at BMP. I didn't. But what was good, it's much easier to write a book when you've got a full-time job. Because you get your four weeks' holiday, you think, right, got to get down to this, and I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, and I'm gonna do my writing, which I did. Once I'd left and gone freelance and was doing my third and fourth books, because I've got another two books for when I was doing those, it was much harder because you're sitting down to write, and then someone phones up from say Saarchy's and they've got a job, regular job to do. You by the time you come back and you know you've lost your or you think to yourself, Sarchy said they're phone today. They're in fact they're supposed to, they're supposed to phone me on Wednesday. And and you don't have that carefree relaxation that you get when you've got a full-time job. But yeah, I once I've done four, I I really didn't I really didn't know any more things. I'm not sure I I'm not sure I do now. But it no, it was a cool thing to do, I think.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. I totally agree. If you think back across across the totality of your career then and and it's not really a career, isn't it? Well it is, of course it is, but it's it's yeah. But with a succession of jobs, really. You're yeah, but you're you because you you've absolutely risen through the the the ranks of advertising, you've done some famous work, you've you know been offered vast sums of money to to change it, not always for the better. I don't straight back again before I got used to it. And you've written four novels. So what I want to ask you, and I know you're you're terribly modest about your own capabilities, but I want you to put that to one side for a moment, if you wouldn't mind, because I want to know what you think, your skills or knowledge or talents or character traits that you have that maybe people other people don't have that have helped you to get where you got in your career.
SPEAKER_00I've got a very good memory. That's not even I mean, it's I've got the memory like a fucking stalker. Um if I meet people that I went to school with, I mean, I did this. My my my primary school was being knocked down. So me and a couple of my sisters. We thought, well, go and see, it was being knocked down and rebuilt. You can never get another chance. And it it went out on Facebook and loads of people turned up. Yeah, and people were saying to me, I don't know if you remember me. And I go, Of course I remember. I I I may not have seen you for 45 years, but I am for no apparent reason. I know that you've had a brother called John, your dad worked at Kodak, but and sometimes I have to keep that down. And I'm extremely fluent in speaking the past, and a lot of people aren't. You are, you're very good at it. But when you meet people that aren't, and you say, you know, this happened, that happened, and you can come away feeling slightly deflated because you get the feeling that you weren't as important to them as they were to you, but then you think about it, think no, I remember this shit about everyone. Yeah, it's just so I've got a good memory, I'm grateful. I just think happiness is gratitude, and I'm grateful. And I just think and I my childhood would be very, very happy. But if I'm not living on benefits with free school meals, and we did free marmites we used to get from the clinic up the road, and we just get our clothes with clothing vouchers from um that could be redeemed at the big co-op. It's called the LCS, London Cooperative, great big department store in up the edge of the road in Burnt Oak. Uh, if I'm not living like that, then I'm very grateful. I also I always do what I say I'm gonna do, always, always, always. And I think being a traffic man, weirdly, it gives you a way of working, you just get stuff done. Yeah, you'll find a way, you'll always find a way. So I've got that, and also I am good at writing. Um I look at it and go, that's good. Yeah, but it's not, it doesn't just flow out of me. Uh anyone who says it flows out on me is a liar, it's a mechanical process. It's quite technical. You you have to go back to it, you have to read it, you have to put it on the back of your throat, you have to, if you like, weigh the words, and sometimes they one's a bit heavy and you you take that out, or that one's a bit light and you need the uh another word to balance it.
SPEAKER_01Do you to what to what extent do you or or are there people whom you trust to kind of edit or sub it? Because I know you you write for um the spectator, for example. Are there people who you who you trust to look at your writing and and know how to uh cut it if it needs cutting or improving? Do you know who I trust? Who's that?
SPEAKER_00You all stop Philippa. No, Philippa Roberts, you good account handlers, educated, clever people who can see at a glance what's right and what's wrong. Like Dave Buchanan, who was a friend of ours. Yeah. He like the nicest and most popular man I've ever met, who's but whose whose upbringing in Manchester was very similar to mine in London, half Irish Catholic. He he'd done some telly for British gas, and I was doing the radio. And they say I'll just run it past Dave, make sure it all matches up. And of course, I'm thinking, well, I'm the king of fucking radio. I'll just show it to Dave, of course. Well, he's you know, he goes, Oh, that's great, that, yeah, but you don't need that line there, do you? Maybe if you'd said that and I'd go, not only are you really nice, you're really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I did my first book, because Dave used to tell me to write all the time, write a book, and I showed it to him when I'd done it, and and again he read it, he goes, Yeah, it was about to be printed. And I've got the rough proof copy. And he said, Yeah, but how does she know? Because she hasn't got into the taxi yet, so she wouldn't have known that he'd been, and I went, No, you're right. It was it only took like a sentence to rectify it. So I I I would trust anyone intelligent. Good work doesn't care his name on it, and also I'll get the credit for it in the end. You know, no one says, Oh, Dave You Dave Buchanan made your book better. They just see that I wrote it. So uh no, I do I do trust. I had a good editor at um at Hodder when I was doing this book called Philippa Pride, who's mental, but good. She she but then then you have what's called a copy editor, yeah. And they're there you have to you can you can object to what they do and what they say. I remember I was describing in Untawn Tickets, I was describing this car that I actually own, which is a Mark 214 is 1600e, and I described it all because I love that car. And she goes, she crossed it out, but he means capri. My husband, I don't mean capri, I mean for so if you'd put Ford Capri 1600E, that there's no such thing. So you do have to watch them. No, um, I trust anyone to look at. I I don't have to agree with them, and and very often they're right. And a fresh pair of eyes. It's like when you're recording um radio ads, and you have to all engineers, all studio engineers do this. It doesn't matter which way around it is, they're redoing something you did last week with another engineer. They sit down, they go, What's he done here? And and they start switching it around. The second one's always better, right? Because it's a fresh pair of ears, and it just makes it slightly better. And you get too close to it and you don't notice things.
SPEAKER_01Do you edit yourself typically as well? I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm I'm very strict on myself, I'm really strict. I mean, there's so many little things, yeah, little things you can do. And I'm a great believer. I mean, I went on um woman's hour, yeah, and Martha Kearney says to me, Oh, I love your books. Such an easy read. I said, Oh, don't you start with your easy read? Can't you say challenging intellectual masterpiece? And I remember saying, No, no, she goes, My father used to have a phrase, easy reading, hard writing. Yeah. And I really do, I don't dumb it down, but I go through it just to make sure that it clunks into place that by the time you've read it, you've glided through. Yeah. You know, you don't always achieve that, but that's that's always what I try to do. And I I edit edit myself quite heavily.
SPEAKER_01It's done like that critic who I think it's about a John Lanchester work or something, and said there must must have been as difficult to write as it was easy to read. Yes. And that's yeah, there are different styles of writing, but writers like like you who can write incredibly clear, simple, shortish sentences a lot of the time, that that kind of writing is is not as easy as it might look if you're not used to writing.
SPEAKER_00And that's like I I was not trained by, but influenced by and absorbed the work of the best copywriters like David Abbott, like David Denton, like you know, who who did that, that concision of thought, the fact that their job was to I to persuade you to either do something or buy something, and that takes a lot of skill. And so I just you know, first lines are important. There's other things when it sometimes you're going along quite nicely and the line doesn't click into place quite. And go back to the one before, change that, and it you should drop into place. If that one doesn't, go a bit further up until you find the one that's causing the problem. And very often there's there's a piece of advice that if something isn't quite working, find the sentence that pleases you most and remove it.
SPEAKER_01I read that probably on LinkedIn recently. So maybe it's you said it.
SPEAKER_00It was me, yeah. Yeah. It just reminds me some someone said to me, just remove it. Because what I said is you're often letting the tail wag the dog. Yeah. And you remove it, everything works so much better. And very often that line you like so much slots into place three chapters later. That's much better there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And and so many people think they think they can write because it's the reason I overvalue and undervalue writing is that everyone can literally do it, everyone can write a letter or an email. And so very often they think they can write in inverted commas properly, and and and and very often they can't. And you and I have both metelligent, articulate people, no, you know, clever. And when it comes through, you go, God, this is boring, you know. Or or things can look a bit written. Oh, you've tried a bit hard there. Please without you.
SPEAKER_01That's that's the other. I mean, you mentioned Martin Amos earlier. Um I've read a couple of his books, and I just so writing like yours with with the all due respect, and and I know how difficult it is. You read your stuff and you go, Oh, that's that's great. I I reckon I could do that because it look because it reads easy. Someone like a Martin. Name as you read and I read that and go, Jesus Christ, that that is kind of they're two different things, they're two different very different styles.
SPEAKER_00Also, let'd be perfectly honest. Uh he has a far greater level of education and intellect than I've got. But yeah, he he he found it very um he he was very mechanical and very methodical about his writing. Uh going for a walk is something. I mean, just writing short form things. You set me down, asked me to write scripts, can't do it. Go for a walk, literally five minutes. I know what I'll do, and come back and type it. So with my second book, I left myself far mil far too much to do because I knew oh, that'll happen, that'll end, and it'll end with this. But all I've got to do is write it. Oh shit. Right. Uh that's it, it's and I always think you should have a beginning and an end. Was it someone put it? It it's like it's like going for a walk with a destination but no map. As long as you know you're going to end up there, you can go anywhere you like. And also, having gone over that way, you might decide that um that destination is not for you. But so many people like creative writing classes, oh, just you know, just let it flow. Would you ask someone who've never played a piano before to just open it up and let it flow? Of course, you even. So, no, it it's so on the one hand, I I don't value it because anyone can do it. But on the other hand, it does annoy me when people think they can write properly. Uh and they really can't.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna ask you another, because we're talking about your your story. You are the hero of your story, but every might be right. Every every great absolutely every great story has not only a hero but an anti-hero. So I'm not asking you to name individuals' names unless you particularly want to. You're more than a bigger one.
SPEAKER_00I won't be no, I could. Of course I do.
SPEAKER_01But it might but it you know, so it might be people or groups of people, it might be I don't know, structures or systems or prevailing ideas, things that you reckon that you have to overcome during your career to to be successful.
SPEAKER_00The lucky and lovely thing is that for the almost all my career, I didn't feel I have much to overcome at all. It just seemed to happen quite quite naturally, and people were very welcoming and very happy for me to do whatever it was I did. But latterly, I know we've discussed this before, and it's the most childish and self-regarding thing I'm gonna say, though it's got quite a lot of competition, is the worst thing that ever happened to the creative industries is the boring people came in. I know that sounds really childish, but I know what I mean.
SPEAKER_01What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00What I mean is I not even when I was a child, even as recently as the 90s, there was them and us, and this sounds so self-regarding, but I know you know what I mean. And uh we worked in advertising, we might be writers, art directors, photographers, actors, agents, uh sculptors, the creative journeys, and then there was them and they worked in finance and they lived out of the suburbs, like played golf, like you know, they were accountants and solicitors and things like that. And it was fine. We lived in our world, we lived in theirs, and we sort of liked each other and needed each other. And then there came a point, and I don't know how or when, when they decided they wanted to be the cool kids and they came into advertising, they came into television, they came into comedy, and they just haven't got that thing. If you think back when you first went to BMP, I'm not saying everyone was really cool and everybody, but there was a there was a theme that I can't even describe it. There was just an attitude and an appreciation and a facility with words, pictures, or ideas. And these people they haven't really got it. They're much more comfortable with process, and so they they bring process into things. And you know, I was brought up with not with Mary Whitehouse, but with Mary Whitehouse. That'd be a childhood to talk about, wouldn't it? You can't say this, and and Frankie goes to Hollywood getting banned from Radio One. It's exactly the same now. You can't say this, you can't say when I was a kid, the boring people were right wing. Now the boring people are left wing. Is that's all it is? And the workers, right, you know, up the workers, if you like, came from the left and now it comes from the right. It's just it's just turn around, but it's exactly the same thing.
SPEAKER_01So if that if that's been a sort of a thing for you to overcome, particularly lately, how how how would you say you go about or have gone about overcoming that to do work that you like and to and to be successful?
SPEAKER_00I think oh, I mean, I I'd like to say I play the game, but I'm not very good at playing. I'm not saying I'm outrageous and I say what I like, but also when you get to a certain age, I think something I think it's true, synapse is loosening your brain, and also you really have seen this before. You really genuinely know how it plays out. And so you find yourself never being rude or nasty, but going, but wait a minute, if you say that, that that doesn't quite work, does it? You know and and and the language as well, the language, the you know, 360 solutions against key objectives and scalable deliverables. I get really properly no, I'm gonna I'm lying now. Uh I feel I have every right to be offended by that. How dare you speak to me like that? You don't speak to your friends and family like that. The word is explain, it's not unpack, it's a price, it's not a price point. No one says that in real life. What's the matter with you? What do you mean uh solutions against something? You mean what I mean it it really is absurd. I j I I just remember going to this meeting, I was doing some work for um Deloitte's, and they're really nice guys chatting away, and then when the meeting starts, he stands up, he starts talking all this crap. And I found it almost upsetting, but you were nice a minute ago. Why are you I mean I was being briefed from Heinz once, and this client said, When mum is that fixture, and I had to stop him. I'm sorry, I don't know. What do you mean? It sounded like he'd taken his mother to a football match. Yeah, you know, when mum is a picture. He meant when mum, well, how patronizing is that was it 1958? Yeah, when when mum is doing the weekly shop, yeah, the fixture was where the Heinz Beans were.
SPEAKER_01Standing near a gondola uh near a gondola end.
SPEAKER_00And all he meant was when you're in the supermarket, yeah, that's it is all that nonsense, you know. So you have to get round it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so if those are some of the things that you've had to overcome, get round, navigate, whatever. On the other side of the thing, you know, no no one is an island, if you like. No, everyone needs a bit of help. Who who would you say are the and again you don't have to name names, but you're welcome to if you want to, which groups or or people have been like allies for you uh along your career.
SPEAKER_00Oh first and foremost, Jeff Forb and John Field, who you won't have heard of, who were the um traffic and production people at Abbottmeade, yeah, who gave me that sense of get it done. They were they were really nice, never had a crossword with anyone, kind people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00John spoke John always in his speech reminded me of Ray Wilkins, sort of that sort of gentle, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Everything was and and so from them I learnt how to just behave myself, you know, just conduct yourself and get things done and don't panic and always look for a way. And the writers like David Abbott, I mean, I've always tried to work for people better than me. Difficult. I mean, so Abbott, Chris Wilkins, Leon Jones, Tony Cox, Frank Budgeon, and artistically, people like Mark Redding and Dave Dye and Paul Belford, these people have influenced me a lot. And art direction is really important. I'm useless, I I I've got no visual flair whatsoever. However, having spent so much time among good art directors, I'm quite good at going, you know, don't hang the picture there, it look better there, and put that down. So, all the all those people advertise is a wonderful business, or at least it was sort of on the fringes of show business and big business and sport, and you know, you get a little inkling of everything. So, and also as a child, the more I think about it, I mean, I was surrounded by all sorts of people: black people, white people, Jewish people. My background was half Irish and half Cockney Sparrow, I suppose. Um they weren't literally Cockneys, but you know, none of us from Crickerwell and Kilburn.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And also my auntie Ivy, for instance, uh and Uncle Des were black. Obviously, not my real auntie, you know, but you used to call your friends' parents auntie and uncle. There were loads of Asian people. Asians were under underestimated what they did for the economy. Because I remember when corner shops became Asian corner shops, and suddenly they didn't close at half past five, they were open until seven, and and they were just brilliant. And I I think without Asian supermarkets, Asian corner shops, there'd be no 24-hour supermarkets, there'd be no Westfield. That's where it all began. So I I was I was in Brent, I the most multicultural borough in Britain. So that was all around. I almost had too many influences all around me. All girls at home, all boys at school. My my school was outside of a football terrace, the most male environment I've ever been in. And and some of the people I know that went to that school that didn't have sisters, yeah, I think it was sort of too male. And I and and without realizing it, I I just had so much balance. I had girls, women at home, blokes at school, also within my um family, my mum's lot as discussed, thieves and vagabonds. Um and my dad was like almost saintly. So I had him, so I had that balance as well. And it's only when you're older, and at times like this you reflect upon that, you realize, oh my god, I mean, so fortunate, I wouldn't have swapped my. I've got no regrets with that career, none whatsoever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I nearly made a misstep going to Manchester to work for the Guardian because I was flattered into it. Because I've got, I don't know if you've got it, I've I've so got it. That confluence of arrogance and humility. You've probably realised it already, listening to this. Half of me goes, Oh, I'm the best in the world, and the other half goes, Hey, thank you so much, Fashion. So I end up, you know, uh someone's only got to flatter me and I'll and I'll just do whatever they've asked me to do. And sometimes I get jobs like that. I've not doing this.
SPEAKER_01So as as you reflect on all of that then, and and on your storied career, if I can call it that, what's what's next for you? What's next in the near or the far future?
SPEAKER_00Well, I've got to get this book away. I've got to get that away. Does it have does it have a name yet? Music of Life. The music of life. Oh, lovely. I'll send you a couple of chapters, see what we think. I've got to get that away. And I just continue to um I never know. I've got used to it now. Uh I couldn't bear it to start with being freelance. Because we all suffer if we work freelance from what I can only describe as FTJS full-time drift syndrome. People just not getting back to you. You work for yourself, you get back to me immediately, and and me to you. And and and if you think it about your head, the people that are good at getting back to you, they they're nearly all freelance. And people just people just don't. That's really that's annoying. So I've I've I've I've just got to navigate that. And and you know, you always have to think these people didn't get back to me, but then you have to balance that with you suddenly get a job from someone you never heard of. Yeah, and it and it's like I had one the other week, I got Angus Deaton in, and it was lovely. They paid me quickly, you know, just nice, and you have to bear that in mind. So I just carry on until people stop asking me, which hopefully they never will.
SPEAKER_01And and what about outside of work and career stuff, writing, etc. We'll take it that family and other loved ones are important to you, but what what what else what else do you like doing? Hobbies and interests, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, this is so pretentious, but why break that? Because you know, my wife said I was common in all the wrong ways. She said, You can swear a fucking reggae comes up the street half an hour before you do fucking is fucking that. Uh, when the football's on the telly or something. When it comes to something a common person might be good at, like putting a shelf up. Oh no, darling, I'm so sorry. So common and pretentious. So, what I'm gonna say about being pretentious is I really mean this. My life is my hobby. Coming down to Tuting to see you. That's that's my hobby. Well, you're welcome anytime.
SPEAKER_01No, um coming to tuting is the best hobby I've ever heard of, by the way.
SPEAKER_00But you know, I I like things that I've always liked, that that old cliche, no um, no output without input. So I love going to the theatre, yeah, comedy shows.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I follow sport, not to your level, but I you know, yeah. I uh in interest, current affairs, whatever's around you, because um, you know, you never know when it's gonna come in handy to re you know, they're just so my dad used to say, open your front door, the whole world's outside. So I I I just I've got no, I don't play golf. I'm not competitive. I I I think you might like it. I had one go at the driving range. I thought I'll go and knock a few balls around my mate Peter Campbell. I was lucky if I hit one in ten. It's hard, isn't it? Oh, but when I did, just purely by child, oh my god, and I was desperate to have to do it again. Another ten goes, I'll do it again.
SPEAKER_01Extrapolate that over 18 holes, one good shot can keep you coming back. No, exactly.
SPEAKER_00A bit like temping bowling. I'm brilliant, I'm shit. I'm brilliant, so no, I'm not really uh I mean football to me is a bit like art direction. I I know good stuff and I see I can't really do it myself. Uh but no, just take an interest in all the all stay curious, stay don't let the old man in, you know. Stay young. I don't mean young as in going clubbing and wearing stupid clothes, but just keep interested, because that's the only way you'll be interesting. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Uh final, final question, Paul. Uh as we're we're on a podcast, as you know. So I would like you to give us a podcast recommendation, if you wouldn't mind. Oh. Or a radio show.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, there's no radio shows anymore. They sort of aren't, are they? Ten songs in a row. Um, your better music mix. That's a great podcast. Depends who's on it, and it works best if you don't like them in the first place. It's an American podcast called Your Favorite Band Sucks. And there's these two dudes, and they are dudes, sort of like out of Wayne's world, and they just lay into but but they've got all the reasons, and then you can say, Well, he ripped that off that, you've only got it, and um yeah, you know. So when when they did an episode on, for instance, the Clash, oh I couldn't wait to hear the Clash being slagged off. Elvis Costello. Uh, sometimes there are American bands you don't really know, but you're a big music head, you'll you'll know them all. And sometimes you don't agree. The David Bowie one's good because you think, Christ I didn't know that, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh and they're just so horrible. But but they're musicians themselves and they can back it up. Right. Your favorite band sucks.
SPEAKER_01Your favourite band sucks. Thank you for that. That's terrific. And thank you even more for being so generous with your time, your stories. You always make me laugh. And I'm just very grateful that you spared us however long this has been. It's felt like five minutes, probably been a bit longer.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's been an hour and a half, by the way. But um, no, thank you. Happiness is gratitude, and I'm I'm grateful that you asked me. So absolute joy to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01Well, bless you. And best of luck, best of luck with the next chapter. I'll get back to us and say, Yeah, I'm gonna get back to the first one. Literally the next chapter.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'll send you the first few chapters. Tell me if you want to read any more.
SPEAKER_01Join me next time on the Amber moment, when we'll be hearing another story of another remarkable career. Until then, stay amber.