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.
