My first encounter with the North West media and marketing community was in 1974 when my brother won free tickets and a drive in an orange Volkswagen to go and see the premier of “Herbie Rides Again”, courtesy of a competition in the Manchester Evening News.
Murray
After that it was a bit of a lean period for me and the North West community until, in 1990, I got a second interview to be an account executive at Hyde Burnett PR in Stockport. I didn’t get the job but I did get to recount the story years later to their green-faced MD at an anniversary party for the consultancy I’d been invited to as editor of Adline.
By the time I joined Adline, in August 1993, both of us had seen better days. In 1988, aged 24, I’d been photo editor of girlie magazine Mayfair and regular going to model parties at Stringfellows and Hippodrome and hobnobbing with celebrity short-arses such as Peter Stringfellow and the Sport’s David Sullivan.
In 1993, I was a reporter on the Dudley News.
The Dudley News was a free-sheet published by Reed Midlands and it was shit. Dudley, an extremely unwell to do market town, nestling between Wolverhampton and Birmingham, was dying on its feet. One of the then biggest shopping centres in Europe – the Merry Hill Centre – had been built about 3 miles from the town centre and, as result, every other shop in the once thriving town centre, was a charity shop or an “All You Can Buy For A Pound” emporium.
So me and the only other reporter (the self acclaimed “minimalist poet” and cod-fishing enthusiast Gary Bills) sat in an office in the centre of the town and tried to come up with stories that didn’t involve shops closing or people losing their jobs. Dudley’s only tourist attraction, Dudley Zoo, didn’t exactly help matters either.
If either of us were foolhardy enough to venture there in search of a story, all we would find was a badly-fed molting Llama looking forlornly over the fence at us. (I once tabled an idea for a story about helping ill-nourished children in the borough and solving the problem of the failing zoo in one hit, but it was sadly spiked…)
We had a bit of fun occasionally – I once completely made up a front page story about Duncan Edwards, a Manchester United player who died as a result of the Munich air crash and was buried in the cemetery in Dudley. The story involved a made up plot by Wolves fans to attack his grave after United put them out of the cup. We had a great picture of a guy from the local Laser Quest (who did it for a bit of free publicity) sat on a fishing stool (predictably provided by the cod-loving Gary), wrapped in a United scarf and wearing a red and white bobble hat.
We had a long made-up quote from him about how he’d be sitting up all night on a vigil in the graveyard to safeguard his idol. It was a great story but complete bollocks. After we’d done the photo shoot (which rather inappropriately saw me reduced, off-camera, to rolling around in hysterical laughter), the hapless Laser Quest employee, confessed to me in a broad Black Country accent: “I dunno what me mates will say; I’ve got a season ticket for the Villa…”
Still, apart from such occasional hilarity and the one time I got Bernard manning to slag off a politically correct Wolverhampton University rag mag, it was pretty dire.
I’d only taken the job out of desperation after my then wife and I had bought rather a large house in nearby Kiddeminster and discovered that all three floors of it needed rewiring. Urgently.
Still, the experience stood me in good stead, and whenever things got fraught at Adline, I’d think: “Well, it’s bad, but it’s not as bad as the Dudley News!” It’s mantra that sticks with me to this day.
Adline, too, was in a bad way. In 1993 it was 13 years old. It was using new technology, but still looking like it was using Letraset. It was also pioneering scanning pictures in-house well before the technology made it even vaguely viable – with the front page photo captions really had have been saying: “The black blob on the left is Birmingham Public Association life chairman, Alf Grunge, presenting a cheque for three pounds fifty to the black blob on the right, Helen Double-Barrel from NABS”.
Editorially, too, it was in a poor way. The editor at the time only worked for it for a couple of days of the month and basically just subbed a few press releases and put stories about tiny account wins by his mates as front page leads. (He also used to sleep in the rather grungy Adline office, allegedly as it gave him access to the sundry delights of the “night life” of nearby Balsall Heath. He also used the office to store his impressive porn collection, well away from the potentially prying eyes of his wife).
In those days, Adline was very Birmingham-led but had no relationship at all with the majority of the serious players in any of the regions. It had had a golden age in the mid 80’s, but, now top heavy with non-productive incompetent senior staff, it had all but gone to the wall.
It had been facing closure in the autumn of 1992, until a last minute rescue by Wilmington Publishing (then newly arisen from the ashes of Maxwell Business Communications) saw it given a new lease of life. Wilmington, apparently, gained control of the magazine for nothing – they paid off a few debts and underwrote the salaries and set about re-inventing the title.
So I took on the role of editor of Adline. At the time I was 29 and a half, married, settled and, probably heading for premature middle age and, in all likelihood, kids. I didn’t know at the time that I was taking the first steps along a route that 12 years later would see me leaving the UK, probably never to return… But, bollocks to that, with all the sundry sex, drugs and rock and roll that lay ahead, I don’t regret it. Well not much.
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