Fast and Louche

by Jeremy Scott

  Instinctively I drew back behind my clients cowering in the window. He was my murderous, revolutionary black drug dealer … and I was ashamed to be seen by him in such company.

  A few months later a job came through that was to put the final seal upon the advertising business for me. Garrett’s got the contract to produce a series of Volvo commercials for Scali McCabe, their New York agency. A Swedish film of lyrical beauty, Elvira Madigan, had recently opened in Manhattan to considerable acclaim and the agency decided that its unknown director, Bo Widerberg, was the man they wanted to direct their spots. I flew to Stockholm to hire him.

  A committed communist, he was a cult figure and role model to the young in Sweden. Craggy faced with hornrimmed glasses, he looked like a schoolmaster and lived in a cabin in the woods twenty minutes from Stockholm with his pregnant student girlfriend. ‘She looks good, but she don’t talk good,’ he explained.

  Both were dressed in identical grunge fashion combining urban revolutionary and the older Tolstoy. Seated in their primitive kitchen wearing a Brooks Brothers suit with Turn-bull and Asser shirt and tie, I realised my ensemble was ill-considered. Rather frostily Widerberg informed me he never saw TV, he didn’t own one. And, on principle, he never watched commercials – he believed Western consumerism was responsible for the world’s ills. Tucking my Gucci loafers out of sight beneath the crude wooden table, I agreed with him warmly and we talked.

  Next day we met again, this time for lunch in the Opera Keller, the superb rococo restaurant in Stockholm’s Opera House. As arranged, I had half his fee with me in cash. The dollars formed such a wad in my hip pocket they ruined the cut of my trousers and were uncomfortable to sit upon. I tried to get rid of them early, but he wouldn’t have it, stopping me with a nervous glance around him. At the end of the meal we visited the men’s room together and furtively the deed was done there. Sweden was a particularly formal country in certain ways, he explained.

  The commercials were designed to sell the Volvo’s hardiness and longevity. One was set on a frozen lake surrounded by forest in northern Sweden, deep in snow. An ancient log cabin stood on the shore – a sauna. The TV spot called for a fit, naked geriatric to step from it, walk twenty yards across the frozen lake to a hole cut in the ice, and jump in.

  The temperature was fifteen below; film crew and others at the shoot were dressed in thermal clothing and moon boots. My clients, Ed McCabe plus the agency art director and account director, had been joined by their client Le Marr, marketing director for Volvo US. His presence had made them unusually tense, for in keeping Le Marr happy rested an account worth $3 million a year. But he remained chronically restless and discontent. Fear created an uneasy atmosphere in the big Winnebago trailer with observation window which had been positioned overlooking the shoot on the frozen lake. Heated and comfortable, equipped with a rest room, its driver/butler provided a constant supply of coffee and hot grog to the assorted clients and myself sheltering within.

  Setting up the first shot had taken an age, but at last the film crew were ready. After a final briefing on network regulations on nudity – ‘No tits, no hair, no crack in the ass,’ McCabe instructed – Widerberg zipped up his anorak and stepped out into the freezing cold to direct the shot.

  The oldster we’d cast in Stockholm, an 82-year-old fitness freak, had meanwhile been roasting in the antique log-built sauna on the water’s edge. On Widerberg’s call of ‘Action!’ he stepped from the hut, naked but for a skimpy towel, toddled barefoot across the ice, paused for an instant to shed the towel, and jumped into the hole. His bald head disappeared beneath the surface. A few seconds later I resumed breathing when it reappeared. The old fellow scrambled out on to the ice alive. ‘I saw his crack,’ Le Marr said.

  I went to tell Widerberg we must go for another take, reaching him as the old man stepped to shore. Everyone was staring at him, for he was covered in blood. In the short time required to film the shot, the surface of the hole had frozen over with a skin of ice. Plunging in, the oldster’s wrinkled body had been sliced all over by tiny splinters sharp as glass.

  The blood was wiped off, he was put back into the sauna to reheat and we went for take two. When the hut’s door opened and the old man padded across the ice it was seen that the talcum powder he’d been dusted with all over was effective; to the clients’ relief, no blood was visible. But, as he jumped in, all in the viewing trailer glimpsed a flash of grizzled pubic hair. And, irritatingly, the oldster was again streaming with blood when he scrambled back to shore. In less than a minute a membrane of ice formed across the hole, it proved impossible to prevent.

  We went for take three. It looked OK to me. ‘I saw his cock,’ Le Marr said.

  ‘But …’ McCabe began reasonably.

  ‘I saw his cock,’ Le Marr shrieked. ‘I saw his fucking withered cock!’

  We went to nine takes before we had a shot that satisfied him.

  At the day’s end, when filming was over and the old man had been revived to geriatric half-life, wrapped in cotton wool and blankets and stowed in a station wagon, and as the unit was packing up to return to Stockholm, Le Marr took a closer look at the antique log cabin on the water’s edge and said, ‘I wanna buy it.’

  Next day I negotiated a price with the owner. The log cabin had stood in that idyllic lakeside spot for 300 years, but Le Marr wanted it dismantled, crated, shipped to the USA and reconstructed by the barbecue in the garden of his suburban home in New Jersey.

  20

  Ten Downing Street

  My love affair with advertising had ended. The idea of spending any more time cramming food and drink down the throats of greedy, scared, demanding clients was abhorrent. I ceased going into New Bond Street and sat in my Chelsea flat trying to write a film script.

  James Garrett was remarkably tolerant of my defection. I continued to draw a salary, but one day in the spring of 1970 he called to ask if I’d give him a hand making Ted Heath prime minister. Others were pitching for the Conservative party’s TV campaign in the forthcoming general election, but James was close to landing it, he believed. He asked me to join him to take a brief from William Whitelaw.

  Whitelaw came to that meeting accompanied by two short-haired, pinstriped hounds from Central Office he kept on a short leash, who were not allowed to speak but only bark approval. In his mid-fifties, he was dressed in a blue Savile Row three-piece suit in a retro-toff style no longer truly fashionable. To my eye it looked just a touch too big for him, particularly in the seat – but perhaps it had been built so to allow for growth. His manner was affable, a bland upper-class benignity. He gave off an air of confidence and competence. ‘Everyone needs a Willie,’ as Maggie Thatcher would later say of him. He was the ideal chief-of-staff, incisive, calm, and seemingly above the battle.

  As for myself, I wore pale-grey flannel – the trousers just slightly flared in deference to the style then coming into vogue – a wide-brimmed Herbert Johnson hat – which, naturally, I removed on meeting him – and a striped tie matching his own. He could see at once I was the right sort of chap to have on board.

  The reason for this meeting was that Harold Wilson had dissolved Parliament, announcing a general election in a month’s time. Rejecting suggestions that uncertainty over the economy had led him to choose this early date, Wilson claimed it was prompted by the start to negotiations over Britain’s entry to the Common Market, which he believed best handled by a new government.

  The timing was opportune for the socialists. Wilson’s government had weathered recession and a sterling devaluation, but the economy was now in recovery. A Gallup poll published in the Daily Telegraph showed a Labour lead over the Conservatives of 7.5 points, enough to guarantee a very substantial majority in the election. ‘The thrust of their strategy will be, “the wind blows fair, the ship is stable, why change the crew?”’ Whitelaw informed us, and the pinstripes pricked their ears and growled aggressively on cue.

  To counter this the Conservative campaign would sell
the policies in their manifesto: to cut back the cost of government and lower tax; restore British forces to the Persian Gulf and Far East; direct social services to those most in need, and improve the economy to the benefit of all … but also something else … Whitelaw’s voice altered in tone as he spoke of this and, scenting what was coming, the pinstripe hounds sat up and began to shift and wag their bottoms expectantly.

  … something less tangible, perhaps, Whitelaw continued, but more … more spiritual, more inspiring … a new reputable and moral approach … a whole new style of government! Unable to restrain themselves, both pinstripes began to bark excitedly at this point, jumping up in their enthusiasm. Indulgently Whitelaw allowed them to do so before saying, ‘One Nation! A Better Tomorrow!’ It was the rallying cry of the campaign and the slogan was Heath’s own idea, it seemed. In Australia to skipper his yacht in the Sidney–Hobart race, he’d asked his chauffeur, ‘Why is everyone in such good form?’ ‘Because we know tomorrow will be better than today,’ the man had apparently told him. Improbable, I thought. I’d never met a Strine capable of such shit-licking sanctimony. The man had probably muttered, ‘Yer’d be smiling too if yer were sitting with a six-inch nail up yer bum, yer Pom poppie,’ and Heath had misheard him.

  If Garrett’s succeeded in obtaining this account, what we would be providing to the campaign were six ten-minute films to be transmitted at peak time on all channels in the course of the next four weeks. Party Political Broadcasts, the convention had derived from radio, its traditional form an address by the party leader at his desk. The format could not have been more dull. Since the previous election, the nation had rearranged its living room. No longer was the seating grouped around the fireplace and radio but in front of the box. Accustomed as people now were to the cutting rhythms of TV, ten minutes was an enormously long time. Their attention span had shrunk to sixty seconds, and not all could manage that.

  James’s original and innovative proposal – which he’d masterminded with Barry Day and PR wizard Geoffrey Tucker, plus of course Central Office – was that we should treat each ten-minute length as a mini-programme, incorporating short interviews, clips from ministers’ speeches, soundbites … plus commercials selling particular ideas or policies. It was an excellent notion and one Whitelaw seemed to like. ‘I want every major speech throughout the country covered, not just by the networks but by us,’ he said. ‘Reggie Maudling … Iain Macleod … Geoffrey Rippon on Europe … Peter Walker on housing … and Maggie and, of course, we must use Chris Chataway.’

  Throughout the meeting I’d been taking notes, for later James and I would have to calculate the number of camera crews, studio space and logistics deriving from our client’s requirements. To cover each major speech would necessitate not only a sound-camera team, but a second ‘wild’ camera and operator to get crowd and reaction shots. Because of the other interviews and commercials required, on some days we’d be providing as many as four, or even five, separate film units. And there would be an intermittent but urgent studio demand; we’d have to book one for the entire period, I realised. We’d need a bench-camera set-up and graphics unit to illustrate the ‘negatives’ on the economy and the decline in sterling, plus a first-rate animator. At least two cutting rooms and editors would be necessary, and we’d need to provide a 24-hour production capacity. It was some bill our new clients were running up. I caught James’s eye: both of us dropped our glance at once.

  ‘The key to winning this election is the TV campaign,’ said Whitelaw. ‘Ted wants to meet you and take a look at your setup tomorrow.’

  Asians and Germans can meet to do business at any hour, and so can most Americans, but in Britain the idea of discussing any matter unaccompanied by food and drink is unthinkable; no event can take place without. In the worlds of commerce, politics and the arts, alimentation is taken for granted.

  ‘We’ll give him a sight of our production capacity as we take him up through the building,’ James said to me when we were alone. ‘We’ll hold the meeting in the library. Will you arrange things, Jeremy?’

  I’d been used to doing so in the past. We entertained groups of clients regularly, often screening a new-release movie in the armchair comfort of our viewing theatre before regaling them with food and drink in the large beamed room which had been the library of the Jesuit seminary in Farm Street that was now our corporate headquarters. But I wanted to make this better than those routine events. Not more elaborate, that would be a mistake, but somehow more memorable.

  Garrett’s had won all kinds of prizes for its commercials, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival. But this was of a different order, to obtain the Conservative Party account represented a prestigious accolade. James was a highly successful businessman, he’d built up the company to become the leader in its field, but his talents were greater than the cottage industry he dominated and I wanted to help him gain this crown. We’d known each other a long time; he’d been good to me, moreover I owed him. I’d turned down his offer to run the New York office and lately I had not pulled my weight in the company. I would make up for my dereliction now by doing my very best to help win Garrett’s the account.

  Should I get what was required for this meeting at Fortnum’s, I wondered. Unlike the restricted range the store displays today, its delicatessen counter then was unmatched in its spread of treats, some remarkably exotic. But individual Sudanese dried ants encased in chocolate weren’t right for this occasion, I considered, and a hundred-year-old Chinese egg had quite the wrong association in the circumstance. No, simplicity was the key: canapés, a selection of tiny sandwiches, sparkling water, fresh orange juice, an unostentatious though stylish white Burgundy … the catering should be plain but elegant.

  At the end of that day I visited Nanny at Gilston Road before going home. I helped her pull out her trunk from beneath the bed and sat chatting to her as she burrowed into its close-packed depths, past the carefully wrapped bundles of postcards my brothers and I had mailed her from school … and those Gino and Mother had sent when they were children, further and deeper than the matchbox containing a cube of her great-niece’s wedding cake … the gala shipboard menu of a Mediterranean cruise I’d sent her on when I’d first started to make money, deeper than my Colt .45 and revolver in their oiled-cloth wrapping … ammunition … detonators … to a bottle of 500 tablets of Methedrine I’d laid down in ’66 just before they’d become unobtainable when Burroughs-Wellcome ceased manufacture.

  I’d raided the stock over the years but, as with a rare vintage impossible to replace, I’d plundered it solely for important celebrations. Only a dozen and a half of the 10mg tablets remained, but this was no time to be stingy; it was an occasion for the best. Naturally I did not bother James with precise details of the proposed menu. Quite rightly he would have disapproved and vetoed it.

  Our new and much grander offices were built in solid ecclesiastical style, their dignified entrance supported by church pilasters. And, though the intervening floors were raucous with the clatter of cutting rooms, telephones and chronic frenzy of production, the library at the top, whose monastic austerity was softened by cut flowers, paintings and comfortable armchairs, was tranquil and serious. A suitable atmosphere for such a gathering as now.

  Ted Heath had a portly presence and a florid, well-fed face. He was not a man one warmed to instantly. His bearing and full, rounded tone came over as a rehearsal, but I was puzzled why an intelligent man should have chosen a manner and accent so alienating to so much of the electorate. He arrived surrounded by a small court: Whitelaw, an aide, and the same pair of pinstripe hounds straining at the leash beside them. After the usual social niceties the group took their seats at the table with tacit understanding of their respective pole positions. My role was fulfilled … but they also serve who only stand and wait. I withdrew to James’s office where the sound of the meeting reached me as a muted hum of conversation …

  The minutes passed and I waited nervously, anxious to be sure my car
efully prepared delicacies were well received by our distinguished guest. Not that I expected recognition or thanks for the time and trouble I’d put into their preparation – such is not the way of things, I knew. My reward lay in the knowledge of their excellence. The accompanying Chablis, dry and flinty on the palate, was perfectly judged, I thought, and the pinch of Methedrine added to the canapés at the start was an inspired touch; the slight hint of bitterness seemed actually to enhance the rich flavour of the foie gras, introducing a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, hard to define in terms of taste yet magical, historic.

  But my anxiety was misplaced. The titbits I’d taken such pains to make exceptional were appreciated by all – indeed it seemed our Leader had been quite peckish that morning and they’d gone down extraordinarily well. As I listened to that initial hum of conversation rise in pitch and volume to the lively babble of a party dominated by the confident boom of Heath’s voice, I relaxed.

  And a very good party, I realised with satisfaction. An impression confirmed as the meeting broke up and our guests came to leave, for their mood was quite different to before. People spoke faster, their body language had grown more expressive, their movements more animated. I was, though, a bit worried about our Leader; flecks of spittle showed at the corners of his mouth and he’d turned a rather alarming colour. Doses in the individual treats were low, but I hadn’t reckoned on him being quite so partial to the canapés. Yet he seemed to be feeling fit, indeed all looked to be feeling wonderfully well. The atmosphere – so restrained and formal at the beginning – had warmed into a joyful shared exuberance. No longer strangers, we were comrades in arms, united in the fray. Champagne amphetamine was the perfect choice for such a moment; all were launched on a month-long high which would last until election night. Such was their exalted state, their blood was up and the race was on. Victory lay just before their eyes and all, all was possible …