LITMIR.BIZ

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marketing campaigns that filled the boardroom with an embarrassment of framed riches.

      I was devastated to see him go and even more concerned that, with my long-term ally gone, I would probably be next in line for the dunking sessions.

      I headed up a project to create a new advertising campaign for all of Europe – a first for our now border-squashing company. After nine trying and rather lonely months, the fruits of the ad team’s labour broke in sixteen countries.

      A few months later, sales reached new levels of success.

      Big mistake.

      The success of the work again created a debilitating envy and a nasty campaign of negativity flew towards my desk. I had not followed the European way as I was expected to do, and as Ian-bashing from across the Channel became all the rage, one or two who should have known better in London decided, with a firm eye on their future careers, that it would be useful for them to join in too.

      The negativity reached its peak and the marketing campaign that had been so effective was deemed a disastrous waste of time and resource. It was scant consolation when the work was entered into the industry’s annual awards a couple of months later and walked off with the top accolades from juries all over the world. By that stage I was well and truly disillusioned with an uncomfortably large number of people who, for twenty years, I thought were on the same side as me.

      It was into that bubbling pool that I plunged on that September Monday morning, hoping beyond hope that the weekend had allowed me to put things into perspective. Opening e-mails, listening to voicemails and reading faxes that demanded I report to Germany in the next twenty-four hours to answer yet more charges of nonsense put paid to that. My battles were now almost exclusively against individuals who had the same company name on their business card, and the excessive energy spent fending off the predators seemed such a waste of a beautiful day.

      I also had to consider the uncomfortable possibility that the European view was maybe right, even though twenty years of experience shrieked, ‘No!’ Perhaps the Teutonic vision had a real foundation for a new future and the English oak tree that I was barking up was the wrong one.

      Whatever, I did not want to spoil my two decades of valued working pleasure with months of misery that would end up leaving me bitter, twisted and thoroughly fed up.

      Clearly, this was a battle I could not win and it would have been easier for my sanity to start looking for another job. But when I shared the concerns with friends, they looked astonished at my angst. So long in one company, led by a visionary leader, had protected me from the ravages of the modern corporation. The scenes I described were deemed completely normal – mild even – compared with some of the shockers that my more battled-scarred mates had experienced on a daily basis.

      And if that was sobering, other much more valuable influences came to bear and helped remind me of where my priorities should really lie. A colleague (an unscheming one) was one day perfectly fit and the next doubled up in agony with what appeared to be a back problem.

      Tests followed tests and slowly a much more serious picture emerged. It was cancer, an unkind one, and work, home, wife and children all became replaced by courses of chemotherapy, loss of hair, sallow skin and a terrified look in his sunken eyes as the prospect of death before the age of forty loomed large.

      Suddenly, being a head of a department or having a smarter car than a colleague or staying in a junior suite rather than a standard room, paled against his desire to simply walk out into the back garden and kick a ball with his young son again.

      He battled hard for several months, made it through the longest night, when the family were called to say tear-strewn goodbyes around his beeping, tube-infested hospital bed, and fought his way into the light of a new day and merciful remission.

      A farmer from a village near my home, only a few years older than me and a great character, had started to feel unwell.

      We went to see him at Addenbrokes Hospital, where he sat, a frightened and suddenly small man, not knowing what had gone wrong. Unbeknown to any of us, a tumour was slowly eating into his brain and six months later this strong, funny, warm-hearted father of a beautiful young child lay ranting in a private mad world at the local hospice.

      His funeral was, in the end, a blessing.

      A pilot whom I was privileged to meet vanished into the heavens. A brilliant flyer, respected by all who knew him, who flew stunts for Spielberg and charmed all those whose lives he touched, had one slip and his thousands of hours of experience suddenly counted for nothing. His Messerschmitt plunged to the ground and the impact and explosive fire took him away too.

      All were people of my sort of age, now being remembered amid the tears, and the fragility of life was brought well and truly home. When one is made aware of such a fragile thread, the rail journey, the tube, the meetings and the unbelievable pettiness of it all are brought into sharp focus.

      I was healthy, successful, lucky to have a loving, supportive family and a wonderful home. I had achieved a lot professionally, met enough fascinating and famous people to fill Hello!, and through my friendships been privileged to enjoy a number of very special moments.

      The back seat of a Hawk jet with the Red Arrows. The Williams pit garage in Japan when a friend became world motor-racing champion. Being at Wembley to see Chelsea lift the FA Cup. The helicopter trip in to the Grand Canyon with a party of journalists. The run up to London in a Royal Navy submarine. The breathtaking descents of the Cresta Run. Learning to fly and gaining my pilot’s licence. The many opportunities that had come my way from the people I had met over two decades of corporate life.

      My portfolio of achievements was good and I seemed to be respected within the industry for all that I had achieved. Was my existing predicament really so bad that all this was worth giving up, just because a new band of people had new views about how the future should be shaped? And if I did move on professionally, would I simply be exchanging my nine-to-five commuting day for another, perhaps less bright hamster wheel, that even now lurked in the file of an unsuspecting headhunter somewhere in London?

      Or perhaps now was the time to have a complete change of direction, sell up, move away, downscale, live simply and opt out of the race that seemed to be more and more dominated by the rats.

      The salary, the bonus, the car, the expense account, the opportunities, the travel, the house, the holidays, the large garden, the privileges. Was this really exchangeable, especially when I was not on my own and had the responsibilities of others to consider?

      The answer was a mixed-up ‘Yes/I don’t truly know/probably/I’m not sure/don’t be such a bloody fool’. But, with the events at work clashing with the dramas of the cancer ward, the local hospice and a lone Spitfire dipping a saddened wing over a pilot’s funeral in tribute, I had at least come to the conclusion that something needed to happen. Something or someone deep in my subconscious was giving me a heavy-handed prod, and chucked a lifebelt on the surface of the swirling water right under my nose.

      I grabbed it and started to swim.

       2

       ADVERTISING WORKS

      As a marketing man I’d spent much of my time proving to companies that investing money in a fine advertising agency generated an excellent return for them in terms of additional sales.

      At the end of the following week, the marketing people at a company called Clipper Ventures could make the same claim to their superiors. They had created a single-page, colour, right-facing ad and booked space in the Sunday Times supplement. All they had to do was sit back to wait for a reaction and they didn’t have to wait long to get one from me.

      A picture of an ocean-going racing yacht storming along under reefed sails on a wave-flecked ocean. A headline beckoning the adventurer. A number to call. The seductive line that offered the

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