Ad infinitum

THE Gaffer and I were on holiday at her sister's in London when I got a phone call from Guernsey mate Jock McMonacle.

'Hey, Shack, LWK have an ad in the Press looking for people.

You have to apply, mate.'

So I did. Shoddily and makeshiftily.

LWK was Guernsey's top ad agency. Everyone had their own opinion on what the initials stood for.

Rumours were rife that the people there worked three days straight without stopping, got all the best accounts and were occasionally spotted in Town dressed all in black, pale and wearing sunglasses.

These were real admen and women.

I sketched some very poor ideas and straplines (I didn't even know at the time that they were called straplines) and faxed them through from a corner shop fax machine at £10 a sheet.

A couple of weeks later I got a letter asking me to come for an interview.

I took the afternoon off from Tricorn builders' merchants, packed my very best typewritten short stories into a Besant's carrier bag and went along to 'Fever' Street.

The door was a big steel thing, like a vault. There was a reception area with strange flowers. There was much corrugated iron. The door into the studio had a push-button lock. There were people in there wearing suits and operating computers.

I had just come from a warehouse where I'd loaded up old Sid from Musgrove's pallet of cement, had my 'lonch' in a shed and graffiti'd the staff bog wall with another witticism ('If you are what you eat, then how many fat Brummy alkies does Dave F go through in a week?').

I felt all scruffy in my black leather Red Cross Shop jacket and yellow shirt as they showed me into the bar. Yep, bar.

They had a work bar.

'Would you like a beer?' asked the receptionist.

I thought this might have been a test.

'Er, no thanks.'

I was in there for yonks.

Dozens of people came and went. Frosty, attractive women who ignored me, besuited men, obviously people from other ad agencies who wanted a change, and fellow chancers.

There was even a bloke with one arm.

All of them had bulging portfolios.

I looked at my carrier bag full of A4. I really had made a big mistake.

After about two hours, I was planning my escape through the window when the secretary called me through.

'If you'd like to go to the board room...'

Board room? The only time we saw the board room at Tricorn was at TGWU meetings.

There were three of them: Charlene, Melissa and Caspar. They were all in black and they were all smoking Silk Cut purple. All cool and studio-tanned and glamorous.

'Do you want a beer?' asked Caspar.

What the hell, I thought. Might as well.

'A cigarette?' asked Charlene.

'I'll have one of me own roll-ups, ta,' I said and immediately regretted it.

I heard the advice my schoolteacher sister-in-law had given me: 'For God's sake, don't be a professional Yorkshireman, they'll hate that.'

'Do you like Derek and Clive?' asked Caspar, and launched into the Alfie Noakes Yorkshireman sketch.

'I didn't see that ending coming,' said Charlene after reading one of my stories.

The door opened and a woman wearing what looked like a Millett's bivouac for a skirt shouted in my ear: 'It's not Marmite you need for a hangover. It's Monster Munch.'

She was referring to a story I'd written that was to be published in a lads' mag.

'That's Jane,' they said after she'd gone, as though that would explain everything.

In retrospect, that afternoon was like Dragons' Den (but instead of inventions I had a rake of typewritten stories) or X Factor (but I had to sell myself instead of my voice).

I walked back home traumatised.

'Did you get the job?' asked The Gaffer.

'I don't know,' I said honestly.

'I have to go back and meet the boss.'

A week later I was in the office of the boss – Joey Krakatoa, a Cypriot New Zealander who wore a Breton fisherman's cap at all times, even indoors.

He was the K in LWK.

'How much are you on now?'

'Er, 12 grand,' I lied. I was on 11.

'I'll give you 13. Are you a poof?'

'No, I'm married.'

'Rock Hudson was married, mate. You start Monday.'

I'd never had an interview like it. It lasted one minute 40 seconds.

Monday morning and I was up early. I hung around outside Fever Street and was greeted by Charlene.

That week was to be the first of two-and-a-half-years-worth of weirdness, hard work, sleeplessness, sweat, joy, fear, delirium, absolute terror, jubilation, lager, takeaways and many, many, many, roll-ups.

I spent some time with the radio department, Tim Delbert and Rick Whittle (who was the W in LWK – I asked him who the L was and he said, 'He was called Legg, but he legged it').

They were the two most laid-back blokes ever. I know they worked hard – you could hear their stuff all the time on radio – but most of their days seemed to consist of making paper aeroplanes and 'going up the studio'.

We did all-nighters on brilliant campaigns that mainly never got used or if they did, we were never told about it.

During one night I was solely responsible for putting Charlene off takeaway pizza forever (I said the underneath looked like the inside of a wig).

We had brainstormers in which we threw around ideas. We took the hit-and-miss out of other ad agencies and we stopped work at 4pm on Fridays and drank lager in the bar.

Once, a window cleaner knocked on the window and asked if he could change his water and when he came inside, he said: 'What bar is this?'

'The Little Wicked Knuckleduster,' I replied. 'It's our work bar.'

'You lucky ******,' he said.

We went to Mowgli's until chuck-out time and took over all three floors of Splatten's for our Christmas parties. We went on football trips, trips to the London office and some of us even went to Australia.

For a golden, sparkling couple of years, LWK was the best.

On TV, Mad Men illustrates how the ad man was king in the 60s. In the 80s he went on to become God.

But I'm glad that I came to it in the mid-90s, when humans began working there again.

I've never been through a time when I met so many good friends. It was more than a decade ago and we're still mates. I've been a best man to one and am godfather to another's first-born.

I never got that while digging graves or putting on roofs.

I'm glad I got out when I did, but I'm even gladder that I actually did it.

They say that ad land is by turns pretentious, ruthless, false and hollow and, ultimately, littered with casualties.

But what profession isn't? Except crazy golf course testing. But alas, that's another column.