Made in Leith – Dock

I was somewhat alarmed to open the office fridge and discover this.

Our esteemed Head of Design, Alan, seemingly rendered into a soft, grey, meaty paste and stored in an air-tight jar.

A fair and due punishment for recklessly using Comic Sans, I wondered?

Fortunately not.   It turned out to be nothing quite as gruesome; just one of the many delicacies clever Alan produced on his weekend cookery course at the River Cottage.  Jolly delicious paté it was too.

(But as the mastermind behind such lovely packaging design as the Devilishh pudding range, I’d suggest an overhaul of his paté labelling is urgently required).

Groups yesterday in Glasgow, a fairly thorny and sensitive subject matter and I’m reminded, for one, how remarkable people are and for two, what an extraordinary and peculiar job this is.

One lady in my group was in a motorcycle accident years ago. She broke 36 bones. She was immobile for a while, wheelchair bound for 3 years, walking with 2 crutches for some more years and is now down to one crutch but still needs fairly frequent pain relief. I made some utterly inadequate expression of sympathy and she said ‘well it’s a tribute to how far you can go if you try, isn’t it?’ Isn’t it.

Another lady had all sorts of medical complications and a few years back, lost both her kids in the space of 8 weeks. Her 16 year old daughter and then her 21 year old son. As she said, they hadn’t really had a crack at living by then. She cried a little bit and then pulled herself together.

A further lady then apologised because she’d “only” had a stroke and that was a couple of years ago and now she felt fine.

I hope I am delicate enough in these situations. For what an extraordinary privilege this window into other people’s worlds really is.

I dipped a toe into the water of the Leith Festival last night. A chap called Liam Rudden, arts editor at the Evening News, is directing a play as part of the Leith Festival, round the corner from us at a fabulous little café / coffee bar called Kitsch.

The play is called “Cock and Bull Story” and it’s written by a couple of chaps called Richard Crowe and Richard Zajdlic. It’s a measure of my innocent eyes that I saw no insinuation in this until my play going colleagues started investigating the website. Or maybe it’s a measure of the fact that I’ve been brought up on terrible amateurish plays with poor puns as titles. Whichever. The title turned out to be infinitely cleverer than I had anticipated.

I shan’t spoil the surprise but shall let the director’s note speak for the content here. The play is “set in the working class, testosterone fuelled world of a boxing club” and tells the tale of a long-standing friendship. One of the boys is teetering on the brink of boxing stardom. The other is his coach, mentor and best friend. And, as it turns out, rabidly anti-gay.

This production is proper festival stuff. A tiny stage. Seats stuffed into a humming with fridges venue. But actually, the production values far outstripped (without the slightest disrespect meant to Kitsch) the relatively inauspicious surroundings. The acting was superb. The two boys were brilliant (and pretty – which helps).The lighting was cracking. And Mr Rudden directed beautifully, particularly considering the stage must have been all of eight foot square.

The script bursts into life in the first act. But by the second act, is showing its age. It was written almost twenty-five years ago so I guess it’s all credit to how times have moved on that it starts to seem slightly far-fetched as we bounce through act two. But the boys do it as much justice as you possibly could so the end is as poignant as you could hope.

It’s on til Saturday. Along with a whole array of other delights as part of the festival. Not least of which is, I believe, my photo in one of the art exhibitions. I shan’t tell you where.

Last night, Brie and I were treated to the fiftieth anniversary production of West Side Story, at the very hospitable hands of the marketing boys and girls at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh.

The show was as you’d expect. Crowd-pleasing songs (though have you ever noticed that all the ones you like are stuffed into the first half with a pauce selection of curious discordant numbers and reprises peppering the second half), a polished and portable set (touring production), a cracking little orchestra, the most gorgeously voiced man as lead boy, Tony and a most suitably sweet girl as Maria.

But punctuated by ample refreshment breaks, poor Brie stood patiently through me talking wildly about my favourite subject all night. The experience was topped off with a chance to meet the cast in the bar, post-show.

I always get a bit star-struck in these instances so managed to choke out a ‘great show’ and then fell silent. The actors stared back expectantly. Emma said encouragingly that we worked for the agency that made the IRN-BRU ads. The actors stared back expectantly. And then luckily, as is often the way in these slightly awkward encounters, little knots of conversation distracted little groups of people and the Them And Us moment of awkwardness passed. I would be hopeless in Hollywood.

Anyway, I would thoroughly recommend a corporate hospitality package for anyone who has starry eyes and enjoys a night at the theatre. As this night had icing on top.

We recently had the pleasure of hosting a team from the Marketing Society schools competition. Alva Academy were assigned to us and tasked with using us to help them develop a radio script and a presentation explaining quite why their new product idea was so good.

Yvonne, David and I took to the barge a couple of Fridays ago to aid and assist. They have a cracking product idea. Really well thought through. And whereas we’d imagined it might take hours to help refine and shape, they were actually sharp as darts, got our meagre points really quickly and came up with a lovely idea for a radio script before we broke for lunch. A disconcerting example to set for copywriter David.

Yvonne and I set sail for Stirling last week to watch their final presentation to the judges plus playing of the ad they’d recorded at a local radio station. And they did brilliantly. I am fiercely and unreasonably proud of them – given that we had almost nothing to do with their efforts. So I eagerly await the judges’ verdict on awards night!

As well as a dance off, the first floor had a cheese off last week on the barge.

Each person on the floor brought in one of their favourite cheeses. It was a wonderful varied selection of cheeses – from a supermarket Cheese String to a very smelly top notch Madame La Forge.

We each had to present our cheese and big it up. Then give a mark out of 10 for each cheese.

The winner was a joint effort from Yvonne & Toni for their ‘Creamy Dream’ and they won a wonderfully cheesy ‘Best of Barry Manilow’ CD. Steve came a very close second with a cheese that was actually made by Pixies! He won the much loved ‘ Michael Parkinson Collection’.

It was such a good laugh smelling out the barge and just chilling over cheese,wine and nibbles.

To many more Cheese board Thursdays!

Months ago, a client described Brian as the horse whisperer amongst clients.

Today, I have some throat ailment or other. David Watson just wittily quipped that I was the hoarse whisperer.

Oh, that one day, I can be the other kind.

Every month, we hold a drinks party in the Leith Barge.  Last week, in aid of Comic Relief, we held a Dance  Off.  Unfortunately, I was unable to make it, but I’ve been reliably informed that over £100 was raised on the night and by all accounts we have some great “movers and shakers” in the Agency.

Rumour has it that the guys and gals at The Shore can really strutt their stuff, amongst them Mariapia, Les, Brie, Sarah F, Mona, Emma and Annie to name but a few.

The esteemed Judging Panel (Richard Marsham, Stevie J and Anita) took its responsibilities very seriously – so Brie’s blatent tease act and playing up to the Judges won on the night (she is now the reigning Dancing Queen).   Two to one on the voting, eh Anita?

On Monday morning everyone was still having a good chuckle  – expect Mona on Reception  who was still miffed and said she was “robbed” of the title!

Mikey created an invite for All Staff, you might recognise some faces if you watch it, and there were posters put up all around the Agency to encourage everyone to join in.

Other Comic Relief efforts so far have been a Pie Bake held last Friday in the Leith Boardroom (anything involving food always attracts a good crowd in here) and the girls at Stripe have had a Bake Sale, more news on these soon.

A couple of weeks ago we held a very pleasant lunch in the Leith Boardroom to bid farewell to Caroline Anderson and Nicky Siegal, both now off enjoying a well-earned maternity leave.

And we were delighted to hear the good news yesterday about the safe arrival of Caroline’s second son.

We’re still waiting to hear about the imminent arrival of Nicky’s first baby……

Bloomin’ marvellous!

November is no more.

It’s Movember for real men and it’s an excuse to grow a moustache
and raise money for Testicular Cancer.

It all started so innocently. “It’s Movember, shall we grow some tashes?”

From that mo-ment we were off growing facial hair.

Mr Guy Vickertash got right into it, going straight for a neat handle-bar (which suited him in a strange way).

I went for the cheating beard option, I had too many nights out with my wife and she was never going to be seen with me fully tashed-up.

I wasn’t the only one, the agency started to look like a turn of the century fishquay.
I know we’re in Leith but it was going crackers.

We all had 3 weeks of intense growing before the end of month barge party.

No agency has ever had so many men trimming, scrubbing and moisturising at once.

The end of Movember was going to be different.

Thursday 27th Movember.
Tonight was the night beards were no Mo. It was time to trim. I went for an eighties salesman sort of look. It was a bit special until the next morning.

Friday 28th Movember
Oh dear, it’s time to get the train and I look a bit of a tool. Not dashing, handsome or funky, just a bit of a knacker.

Nevermind a few dodgy looks later I was at work.

The Studio, Creative and Production were all represented by fantastic facial efforts.

Inspiration had been taken from all over the place, from U2′s the Edge to some bloke who fights Indiana Jones in Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Not wanting to leave anyone out Guy had customed a fine range of Mo’s that people could buy.

How could we fail, facial hair, fake Mo’s and a collection bucket. If only work and meetings would go away we could get the full charity plan into action.

Loads of people took a tash and donated cash. Steve Johnstone, our Studio Manager got himself sponsored and raised a good 40 odd quid himself. In total we raised £223 for (Testicular) Cancer Research.

The night itself was a hit. There was a tash themed music playlist and a lot of booze to get through.
We also had a best Mo Competition which was named Man Of The Mo. It was a simple competition, vote for your best real tash. Here are the results:

1st Andrew ‘Chopper’ Thorne
2nd Grant ‘The bloke from the Indiana Jones fight scene’ Byrne
3rd Steve ‘Lemmy’ Johnstone.

It was a cracking day and everyone looked very dapper with both real and fake Mo’s.
Here’s to next Movember.

I think I’ll avoid the Eighties salesman Mo though.