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.