On the same day over in New York, BigBad Toys CEO Alfredo Pazzi is meeting with his key executive team which comprises of:
Seb Goldstein, Vice-president of sales and part-time psychopath
Pete Melba, fellow American-Italian, president, worldwide consumer products division and the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the company after Alfredo himself
Adèle Felous, head of International in the consumer products department, a Frenchwoman with a very large ‘pomme frite’ on her shoulder.
Pazzi: ‘ I keep hearing excuses but the line is not selling fast enough. Less then three years we’ve had Blastboys in the market, we should be on the up not giving in to the Japanese again’.
Goldstein: ‘The sales force knows better than to come to me at month end with anything less than twenty per cent up. They’ll call in favours if they want to save their hides’.
Melba: ‘Well you better be right, Seb, because I’d told enough lies this year positioning BlastBoys as still the number one boys license. We’ve got everyone in town in less than ten days for Toy Fair, and Al needs me to come through with some key seven figure renewal deals. Your sales boys let the data slip and our game will be up.’
Goldstein: ‘What you do with you asswipe licensees is no concern of mine! You bullshitted your way into deals, you get to clean up the bullshit later. I made BlastBoys number one and I will keep it that way.’
Melba: ‘And if it wasn’t for the cash I screw out of the licensees you’d have run out of marketing money and excuses a year ago. Face it, Seb, the Japs have got you on the run again and your so-called friends are jumping ship for SS Tokyo.’
Felous: ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s have a little calm, bien? I am confident that Seb’s team will do their job, just as I am confident that Pete and I will deliver the big renewals that we all need. Even if it is, malheureusement, true that the edge has gone off BlastBoys, my European licensees are still as ignorant as pigs of the fact. They will sign, they will pay, because they cannot afford to risk being without this license!’
Pazzi: ‘ Pray that you’re right, Adele, because we’re not just talking jobs and expense accounts here. We don’t bring in the cash and certain individuals on the Board are going to go head-hunting. I will not give them the satisfaction. This is my business and we will succeed. You all have my full authority to do whatever it takes. Now go and get on with it!’.
In an atmosphere of barely-suppressed aggression, the three executives managed to squeeze out of Pazzi’s office without damaging their expensively-tailored suits. Melba and Felous huddled conspiratorially in the corridor outside Pazzi’s private domain while Goldstein hustled of to whip his sales force some more.
‘Adele, you better be right about these guys you’ve got set to renew’ Melba could barely spit out the words.
‘Relax, Peter. I have them biting off my hand, as you would say. And there is something more of which you do not yet know’ purred Adele. She held up a finger to signal to Melba that he should wait, and produced from her Hugo Boss briefcase a letter on old-fashioned looking vellum paper. With a flourish, she read the important section.
‘And so I am very pleased to tell you that the Board has accepted my proposal that BlastBoys is the ideal license for us to base our return to licensed comics after a seven year absence. I can confirm the terms we agreed at our last meeting for pan-European rights and look forward to receiving the contract and minimum guarantee invoice for one million pounds at your earliest convenience.’
The letter was signed by the Head of Publishing for James and James, the old-established English West country newspaper, book, magazine and children’s comic publisher.
‘So what do you think of that, Peter?’, Adele continued to look smugly satisfied.
‘What I think is how the hell did you squeeze a million pounds out of a limey comic book outfit I’ve never heard of? ‘
‘They are ingénues, Peter, positive ingénues, but they are rich and their new Head of Publishing is an over-ambitious ass. Let him spend his bosses’ money with us. They won’t be back for more, it’s true, but there are always more fish in the sea’.
‘He’s coming to Toy Fair?’
‘Alan Greaves, yes, he will be here. We must make sure he is well entertained, n’est-ce pas?’
‘I can still turn on the charm when it’s needed, Adele, as you know clearly enough. Fix up a dinner and show and I’ll get one of the girls from the agency along, see if we can’t make sure that Alan looks forward to a long-term association with BigBad.’ Melba’s mind was already working overtime. Even if the BlastBoys deal was a stitch-up for James and James, he knew he could hook the fish and persuade him in to ‘the next big thing’ two years down the line, especially if Rachel or Carla ( he couldn’t decide which of two high-class hookers he would line up for Greaves ) gave him the special treatment and a clear promise that there was more to come. Yes, he thought, get a few more like this in the can and they could sail through the year .
The two licensing execs parted promising to catch up again later on the complete Toy Fair schedule.
Behind the closed door of Alfredo Pazzi’s office, the CEO placed a call to a private number in Trenton, New Jersey.
‘Speak’ was the terse acknowledgment at the end of the line.
‘I’d like to talk to Mr Spinetti, it’s Pazzi’ Pazzi tried to sound confident, firm, but it was a struggle.
‘I’ll see if the boss wants to talk to you’ said the voice. The line went silent for two or three minutes and then the familiar, menacing tone.
‘Pazzi, Pazzi, to what do I owe the honour of this unexpected disturbance?’ it was Vincent Spinetti, made man and number two in a major cosa nostra family with its seat in Trenton.
‘Vince, I just thought you’d want to know that my team have assured me that the revenues will be on target, if not better for the current quarter. I know you like to be kept informed of our financial progress.’
‘Assurances you can kiss my ass with, Pazzi. Lou will want to see the money, and it’s my job to count it out for him. We’ll be expecting the five mil on time, last day of March. You wanna wrap that with “assurances” that’s OK by me, long as the dollars are in the bag.’ Spinetti sounded his usual mix of weary resignation at having to deal with idiots, and quiet relish as to how he actually would prefer to deal with them, given the green light from Lou Bergamini, the ‘capo’.
‘Vince, it will be there on time. You have my word.’
‘Keep it, just come across. Last time was not so smooth, I don’t wanna see anything like it again, or maybe we’ll be looking for a new patsy to take the place of this ‘Pazzi’ – get it? Hey – will you listen to that, I didn’t realise I was so funny!’. The phone was replaced without another word.
Pazzi stared out of the window like a man condemned. He was pretty certain that March 31 would not be a problem. However, after March 31 there would be June 30, and then September 30, his life measured out in calendar quarters. He wasn’t at all sure he had many quarters left.
Thursday 11 June 2009
Tuesday 31 March 2009
Chapter 5
Determined to be all corporate-responsible and marketing-dynamic, I wake at 7am Friday morning and shower and shave to the usual strains of Radio 4’s Today programme. If you listen to this you can kid yourself that you’re among the few who really know what the ‘movers and shakers’ are about. One of the elite for whom celeb-obsessed pop music radio or breakfast TV first thing in the morning is beyond the pale. They are beyond the pale, mind you, for all but the brain-dead of this island of ours, however numerous they happen to be. Mind you, if that Jim Naughtie mentions the bloody opera one more time………..
After a quick and nutritious traditional Northern English breakfast of Marmite on toast I jump in the car for the ten minute drive to the office. As usual, I’m the one who opens up in the morning, just as I’m the one who locks up at night (unless I leave early like yesterday, in which case it’s Meryl who does the honours). I do not now and have never in the past employed a secretary. That’s probably a disappointment to you as I imagine that you were looking forward to being introduced to some lithe Scandinavian blonde or sultry Latin brunette, or at worst a refugee chav from Big Brother, and I’m sorry to let you down. However I write my own letters as it would take three times as long to get my own special stream-of-consciousness writing style across in any sort of dictation. And as for filing, well I only have two files, one marked ‘maybe’ which contains 90% of the crap that gets sent in here, and the other one called ‘rubbish bin’ into which the truly desperately, astonishingly awful tripe gets ( eventually) consigned.
Actually I’ve just lied to you again. Sort of. When I was with Jenkins-Platt they ‘allocated’ me a secretary for a while. Poor woman was always bustling in looking to be dictated to. When I eventually succumbed I found that she was in the habit of putting the wrong letters in the wrong envelopes, so that a final demand for payment from a bookshop got sent to the local parish priest appealing for contributions to the church roof fund, and vice versa. If I’d had a bookie and a dominatrix for a mistress things could have been tricky. Eventually Rose was ‘reallocated’ elsewhere.
Of course, this also means that I get to open the post. How exciting! I think it’s a sad day when a man judges his own executive worth on the fact that a woman opens all his envelopes for him before, neatly prioritised, she sets them on his desk in a sweet little folder. I can wield a paper knife with the best of them. And as my reward for such self-sufficiency, here in this morning’s post we have, naturally, more crap. Let me give you an example:
Ideas Limited
‘Where characters come first!’
Kingo and the Kinglettes 26 x 30 minutes in production
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join A list licensees on this exciting new property for boys and girls aged 3 -10.
This all-new Taiwan-produced TV animation series features the hilarious adventures of Kingo, the would-be superstar soul singer sea-lion, and his trio of ‘backing lionesses’ Chiffon, Ronnette and Supreme, collectively known as ‘The Kinglettes’.
Featuring side-splitting and unforgettable characters, Kingo and the Kinglettes has equal appeal to boys and girls, and is a totally original property.
Ideas Ltd is looking for licensees who show a genuine commitment to this property. TV rights will be kept under wraps until Mip.
(Silly Colour illustration of Kingo etc )
Contact your Ideas Limited executive today
(list of execs and phone numbers) including
Dawn Adams ( food and promotions ).
See what I mean? Kingo and the sodding Kinglettes? Good grief! The sound of barrels being scraped metaphorically reaches my ears. Trouble is, this is not a one-off. There are some days in this business when I swear I’ll follow Phil Menwith out the window if I ever again have to look at another 26 x 30 minutes of inept cartoon show that the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kid is going to instantly reject. And with all respect to your occasional Waitrose and Harvey-Nicks targeted ‘Felicity and the Ribbon Folk’ type of license that crops up from time to time, it’s the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kids and their equivalents around the world who provide the money for this business to exist at all.
Even so Kingo and his pals gets filed under ‘maybe’ because you just never know in this business what the kids actually will like until, as they say, you know, by which time it might be too late to make a buck out of it.
Later, Licensing Review copy having been written and sent, I call Baz.
‘Who’s calling the Golden Shot?’ I hear on the other end. One of Baz’s little idiosyncrasies, this unique method of answering the phone.
‘ Morning, Baz, it’s Lance calling you back as requested.’
‘I didn’t ask yer t’ call back, just to let me know if yer need me down there and intend to keep me from honest work for t’ next fortnight.’ Baz hits me with his south Lancs/north Cheshire/ west of Liverpool/ east of Manchester accent peculiar to his region of birth. I talk the same way, only thirty years of living and working with southerners has taken the edge off it. That and trying to sound sophisticated when talking to Americans at trade shows.
‘I should be alright without you, mate, but I would pencil in the meeting I’ve got at the end of Feb. with Kiddyworlds. If you can do that one I’ll handle the rest on me tod for the time being’ I say to him.
‘Don’t start coming over all Northern with me, Crane, you old fraud. Yer not temped to move back up here, are yer?.
‘Tempted, mate, every sodding week, but the bastards I earn a living out of are mostly down here in the smoke, and I wouldn’t want to make it easy for them to forget me by getting out of the way.’ Lest they forget……..
‘Alright, I’ll see you for that. Keep yourself safe and sane’ Baz hangs up, keen to get on with his ennobling day of whatever the hell it is he does when he’s not working for me.
I get down to some work preparing a comparison-chart of promotion opportunities that one of my clients has asked for. Try to make two movies and a tired old TV show sound exciting.
Determined to be all corporate-responsible and marketing-dynamic, I wake at 7am Friday morning and shower and shave to the usual strains of Radio 4’s Today programme. If you listen to this you can kid yourself that you’re among the few who really know what the ‘movers and shakers’ are about. One of the elite for whom celeb-obsessed pop music radio or breakfast TV first thing in the morning is beyond the pale. They are beyond the pale, mind you, for all but the brain-dead of this island of ours, however numerous they happen to be. Mind you, if that Jim Naughtie mentions the bloody opera one more time………..
After a quick and nutritious traditional Northern English breakfast of Marmite on toast I jump in the car for the ten minute drive to the office. As usual, I’m the one who opens up in the morning, just as I’m the one who locks up at night (unless I leave early like yesterday, in which case it’s Meryl who does the honours). I do not now and have never in the past employed a secretary. That’s probably a disappointment to you as I imagine that you were looking forward to being introduced to some lithe Scandinavian blonde or sultry Latin brunette, or at worst a refugee chav from Big Brother, and I’m sorry to let you down. However I write my own letters as it would take three times as long to get my own special stream-of-consciousness writing style across in any sort of dictation. And as for filing, well I only have two files, one marked ‘maybe’ which contains 90% of the crap that gets sent in here, and the other one called ‘rubbish bin’ into which the truly desperately, astonishingly awful tripe gets ( eventually) consigned.
Actually I’ve just lied to you again. Sort of. When I was with Jenkins-Platt they ‘allocated’ me a secretary for a while. Poor woman was always bustling in looking to be dictated to. When I eventually succumbed I found that she was in the habit of putting the wrong letters in the wrong envelopes, so that a final demand for payment from a bookshop got sent to the local parish priest appealing for contributions to the church roof fund, and vice versa. If I’d had a bookie and a dominatrix for a mistress things could have been tricky. Eventually Rose was ‘reallocated’ elsewhere.
Of course, this also means that I get to open the post. How exciting! I think it’s a sad day when a man judges his own executive worth on the fact that a woman opens all his envelopes for him before, neatly prioritised, she sets them on his desk in a sweet little folder. I can wield a paper knife with the best of them. And as my reward for such self-sufficiency, here in this morning’s post we have, naturally, more crap. Let me give you an example:
Ideas Limited
‘Where characters come first!’
Kingo and the Kinglettes 26 x 30 minutes in production
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join A list licensees on this exciting new property for boys and girls aged 3 -10.
This all-new Taiwan-produced TV animation series features the hilarious adventures of Kingo, the would-be superstar soul singer sea-lion, and his trio of ‘backing lionesses’ Chiffon, Ronnette and Supreme, collectively known as ‘The Kinglettes’.
Featuring side-splitting and unforgettable characters, Kingo and the Kinglettes has equal appeal to boys and girls, and is a totally original property.
Ideas Ltd is looking for licensees who show a genuine commitment to this property. TV rights will be kept under wraps until Mip.
(Silly Colour illustration of Kingo etc )
Contact your Ideas Limited executive today
(list of execs and phone numbers) including
Dawn Adams ( food and promotions ).
See what I mean? Kingo and the sodding Kinglettes? Good grief! The sound of barrels being scraped metaphorically reaches my ears. Trouble is, this is not a one-off. There are some days in this business when I swear I’ll follow Phil Menwith out the window if I ever again have to look at another 26 x 30 minutes of inept cartoon show that the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kid is going to instantly reject. And with all respect to your occasional Waitrose and Harvey-Nicks targeted ‘Felicity and the Ribbon Folk’ type of license that crops up from time to time, it’s the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kids and their equivalents around the world who provide the money for this business to exist at all.
Even so Kingo and his pals gets filed under ‘maybe’ because you just never know in this business what the kids actually will like until, as they say, you know, by which time it might be too late to make a buck out of it.
Later, Licensing Review copy having been written and sent, I call Baz.
‘Who’s calling the Golden Shot?’ I hear on the other end. One of Baz’s little idiosyncrasies, this unique method of answering the phone.
‘ Morning, Baz, it’s Lance calling you back as requested.’
‘I didn’t ask yer t’ call back, just to let me know if yer need me down there and intend to keep me from honest work for t’ next fortnight.’ Baz hits me with his south Lancs/north Cheshire/ west of Liverpool/ east of Manchester accent peculiar to his region of birth. I talk the same way, only thirty years of living and working with southerners has taken the edge off it. That and trying to sound sophisticated when talking to Americans at trade shows.
‘I should be alright without you, mate, but I would pencil in the meeting I’ve got at the end of Feb. with Kiddyworlds. If you can do that one I’ll handle the rest on me tod for the time being’ I say to him.
‘Don’t start coming over all Northern with me, Crane, you old fraud. Yer not temped to move back up here, are yer?.
‘Tempted, mate, every sodding week, but the bastards I earn a living out of are mostly down here in the smoke, and I wouldn’t want to make it easy for them to forget me by getting out of the way.’ Lest they forget……..
‘Alright, I’ll see you for that. Keep yourself safe and sane’ Baz hangs up, keen to get on with his ennobling day of whatever the hell it is he does when he’s not working for me.
I get down to some work preparing a comparison-chart of promotion opportunities that one of my clients has asked for. Try to make two movies and a tired old TV show sound exciting.
Friday 6 February 2009
Chapter 4
I get home to my house just as the six o’clock news is starting. The usual mix of Westminster village bullshit and celebrity fawning. I don’t know why I bother. The house is a big old place in Wapping High Street, which, in Victorian times, had been an oasis of upper-class wealth more or less in the centre of the drugs (mainly opium) trade, which flourished around the thriving London docks at the time, fuelled by easy imports from the far east. Nowadays the main type of villainy practiced hereabouts was charging forty quid for a plate of second-rate sushi to wideboy financial traders working in Canary Wharf and its surrounding, high-rise office blocks. Nice to know that the Orientals are still earning out of the area. Four bedrooms , two receptions on three floors, overlooks the Thames from all three. Pretty smart if I say so myself. Where does a humble licensing consultant get together the cash to buy such a pad, I hear you ask? And what the hell exactly is a licensing consultant? I’ll get to that in a minute, but as for the house, well, It’s a long story, but a couple of years after the promotion to marketing director at book publisher Claymore Press I submitted a song for the UK Eurovision Song Contest. Did I mention that I write tunes for a hobby? Oh, well, I’ll get to that later. Anyway, ‘Call me Anytime’ was chosen by Wogan and Co, ended up winning with lots more than ‘nul points’ and, as it turns out, was the last British entry to win at all. Whilst ‘Call me Anytime’ didn’t exactly leap me into the same league as Simons Cowell or Fuller, it did buy me a nice chunk of Docklands real estate.
What a wonderful story, eh? Good news all round and no bad feelings. Only problem with fairy-tale stories is there aren’t enough of them. After I left, Claymore Press went bust on the eve of the millennium after printing and failing to sell five million copies of some movie fantasy tie-in they’d overpaid to get the rights for. Shame that. Could have done with a good consultant.
Consultant, yes, I promised to explain. Well, the licensing business is a dark, dangerous and wicked business, oh yes indeed it is. I know a couple of blokes who’ve made small fortunes out of it. Problem is, they started out with large fortunes. Licensing cost them the rest. That’s because there’s many a right evil bastard out there ( and a fair few bitches, too) ready to take hundreds of thousands off you for a naff set of rights for a naff TV show that’s got a cat in hell’s chance of success. You need to have your wits about you if you’re not to get robbed blind. Either that or you need a good minder, and that’s where I come in. I ‘mind’ my clients so they don’t succumb to all this villainy. Try to help ‘em make a bit of money, keep out of trouble, avoid finding themselves in dark corridors with some of these Armani-suited blag merchants, who are all tooled-up with lawyers, auditors and assorted fancy muscle.
Mind you, that’s not to say that the clients are all saints. They can be extremely dodgy characters, clients can. Licensees, promotional agents, marketing agencies, most have a skeleton or two lurking in their samples cupboard. I once had a client in Oswaldtwistle, Jenkinsons, made socks, managed to buy a couple of licenses for minor stuff and asked me to help them move into the big time. Devout Catholics they were, I remember, crucifix on the wall behind the MD’s desk. If you had to wait to be put through to someone on the phone the system played hymns to keep you amused. Perfect job for me. Turned out, though, that they were knocking out counterfeit branded sports socks in the part of the factory you were never allowed into. I found this out after they’d paid me my first retainer, but before the first deals went through. Needless to say, Dave Jenkinson, the devout Catholic, wanted his money back, and he didn’t mind if blood was spilt to get it. I took a different view, having had to take flak from the likes of Phil Menwith and Graham Painter from Kiddyworlds for ‘introducing them to a crook’ ( as if they hadn’t met enough crooks over the years already ) once we all found out about the pirated socks. Could have ended nastily if it weren’t for Baz.
We consultants – there are a few of us, by the way – are sort of licensing private detectives. Licensed to license, so to speak. Guns aren’t usually necessary ( although I did once do some work for a firm based in Brooklyn, and that wasn’t pretty ). We haven’t had our Sam Spade or Jason King or Elvis Cole yet, which is why most of you won’t have heard of our humble profession and the joy we spread in the industry. But you will one day.
Anyway, here I am in the big house with the big car and ‘keeping my hand in’ consulting other manufacturers over their licensing needs. There’s no one at home when I get there, for reasons I’ll explain later. But there is a message on my answer phone. I recognise the Lancastrian voice right away:
‘Lance, its Baz. Give us a ring to say if you’ll need me down in that shit’ole they call London over the next couple of weeks. Got a nice job up here in god’s own country but I can’t start it till I know you’re set. See how I’m always looking after you?’
The message is from Barry ‘Baz’ Morrison. Who the fuck’s Baz Morrison? Well, if you don’t know, you’ve been reading the wrong papers all your life. Thirty four England caps, average of fifteen tries a season in a twelve-year rugby career that took him from Lancashire to Sydney and back again before he hung up his boots in 1998. Hardest, fastest loose forward ever to pick up a rugby ball. I mentioned above that I ‘mind’ my clients. Well, as in the case of Dave (Catholic) Jenkinson, the clients can turn newty from time to time. So, if things get that extra bit more hairy than usual , Baz sort of ‘minds’ me. I asked him to go and have a quiet word with the good Mr Jenkinson, who saw the error of his ways after contemplating the alternative: tackling Baz at full speed, something the entire Australian national pack had had trouble managing.
Anyway I decide I’ll call Baz in the morning. Right after I’ve finished my 500 words. Nothing like putting off to tomorrow what you can’t possibly do today.
I get home to my house just as the six o’clock news is starting. The usual mix of Westminster village bullshit and celebrity fawning. I don’t know why I bother. The house is a big old place in Wapping High Street, which, in Victorian times, had been an oasis of upper-class wealth more or less in the centre of the drugs (mainly opium) trade, which flourished around the thriving London docks at the time, fuelled by easy imports from the far east. Nowadays the main type of villainy practiced hereabouts was charging forty quid for a plate of second-rate sushi to wideboy financial traders working in Canary Wharf and its surrounding, high-rise office blocks. Nice to know that the Orientals are still earning out of the area. Four bedrooms , two receptions on three floors, overlooks the Thames from all three. Pretty smart if I say so myself. Where does a humble licensing consultant get together the cash to buy such a pad, I hear you ask? And what the hell exactly is a licensing consultant? I’ll get to that in a minute, but as for the house, well, It’s a long story, but a couple of years after the promotion to marketing director at book publisher Claymore Press I submitted a song for the UK Eurovision Song Contest. Did I mention that I write tunes for a hobby? Oh, well, I’ll get to that later. Anyway, ‘Call me Anytime’ was chosen by Wogan and Co, ended up winning with lots more than ‘nul points’ and, as it turns out, was the last British entry to win at all. Whilst ‘Call me Anytime’ didn’t exactly leap me into the same league as Simons Cowell or Fuller, it did buy me a nice chunk of Docklands real estate.
What a wonderful story, eh? Good news all round and no bad feelings. Only problem with fairy-tale stories is there aren’t enough of them. After I left, Claymore Press went bust on the eve of the millennium after printing and failing to sell five million copies of some movie fantasy tie-in they’d overpaid to get the rights for. Shame that. Could have done with a good consultant.
Consultant, yes, I promised to explain. Well, the licensing business is a dark, dangerous and wicked business, oh yes indeed it is. I know a couple of blokes who’ve made small fortunes out of it. Problem is, they started out with large fortunes. Licensing cost them the rest. That’s because there’s many a right evil bastard out there ( and a fair few bitches, too) ready to take hundreds of thousands off you for a naff set of rights for a naff TV show that’s got a cat in hell’s chance of success. You need to have your wits about you if you’re not to get robbed blind. Either that or you need a good minder, and that’s where I come in. I ‘mind’ my clients so they don’t succumb to all this villainy. Try to help ‘em make a bit of money, keep out of trouble, avoid finding themselves in dark corridors with some of these Armani-suited blag merchants, who are all tooled-up with lawyers, auditors and assorted fancy muscle.
Mind you, that’s not to say that the clients are all saints. They can be extremely dodgy characters, clients can. Licensees, promotional agents, marketing agencies, most have a skeleton or two lurking in their samples cupboard. I once had a client in Oswaldtwistle, Jenkinsons, made socks, managed to buy a couple of licenses for minor stuff and asked me to help them move into the big time. Devout Catholics they were, I remember, crucifix on the wall behind the MD’s desk. If you had to wait to be put through to someone on the phone the system played hymns to keep you amused. Perfect job for me. Turned out, though, that they were knocking out counterfeit branded sports socks in the part of the factory you were never allowed into. I found this out after they’d paid me my first retainer, but before the first deals went through. Needless to say, Dave Jenkinson, the devout Catholic, wanted his money back, and he didn’t mind if blood was spilt to get it. I took a different view, having had to take flak from the likes of Phil Menwith and Graham Painter from Kiddyworlds for ‘introducing them to a crook’ ( as if they hadn’t met enough crooks over the years already ) once we all found out about the pirated socks. Could have ended nastily if it weren’t for Baz.
We consultants – there are a few of us, by the way – are sort of licensing private detectives. Licensed to license, so to speak. Guns aren’t usually necessary ( although I did once do some work for a firm based in Brooklyn, and that wasn’t pretty ). We haven’t had our Sam Spade or Jason King or Elvis Cole yet, which is why most of you won’t have heard of our humble profession and the joy we spread in the industry. But you will one day.
Anyway, here I am in the big house with the big car and ‘keeping my hand in’ consulting other manufacturers over their licensing needs. There’s no one at home when I get there, for reasons I’ll explain later. But there is a message on my answer phone. I recognise the Lancastrian voice right away:
‘Lance, its Baz. Give us a ring to say if you’ll need me down in that shit’ole they call London over the next couple of weeks. Got a nice job up here in god’s own country but I can’t start it till I know you’re set. See how I’m always looking after you?’
The message is from Barry ‘Baz’ Morrison. Who the fuck’s Baz Morrison? Well, if you don’t know, you’ve been reading the wrong papers all your life. Thirty four England caps, average of fifteen tries a season in a twelve-year rugby career that took him from Lancashire to Sydney and back again before he hung up his boots in 1998. Hardest, fastest loose forward ever to pick up a rugby ball. I mentioned above that I ‘mind’ my clients. Well, as in the case of Dave (Catholic) Jenkinson, the clients can turn newty from time to time. So, if things get that extra bit more hairy than usual , Baz sort of ‘minds’ me. I asked him to go and have a quiet word with the good Mr Jenkinson, who saw the error of his ways after contemplating the alternative: tackling Baz at full speed, something the entire Australian national pack had had trouble managing.
Anyway I decide I’ll call Baz in the morning. Right after I’ve finished my 500 words. Nothing like putting off to tomorrow what you can’t possibly do today.
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