PS: If anyone is considering taking up the wonderfully convivial pastime of smoking, 11.55 today would be a most excellent time to give it a whirl.
From: David Crutton
To: Dotty Podidra
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.19
Subject: Where the fuck is my queer?
I have a PowerPoint for him to re-jig.
From: Dotty Podidra
To: David Crutton
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.20
Subject: Re: Where the fuck is my queer?
I think he’s in a meeting with some qual research people on behalf of Caroline. I’ll do the PowerPoint as soon as I’ve laminated the doc covers, put out the pads and pencils and sorted out the kitchen order.
From: Milton Keane
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.21
Subject: Hooray for me!!!!!!!!!!
I’m off to my audition now. What audition? I hear you ask. To take the leading role in Big Brother 10! I’ve already put a pencil on thirteen weeks from June! Get your texting fingers ready!!
Milton Keane Future Star of Reality TV
From: David Crutton
To: Dotty Podidra
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.23
Subject: My office now
Explain to me how your most recent e-mail squares with the queer’s all-staffer.
bbc.co.uk/news
Briton found dead in Nigeria
The body of a British tourist has been found floating in a river in Lagos, Nigeria.
According to the Nigerian Police Force, the man appeared to have been beaten before being thrown into Badagry Creek, which runs into Lagos Harbour. The NPF is withholding the man’s identity until his family has been informed.
Superintendent Julian Odulate of the NPF said: “We have the dead man’s passport. His first name is the same as his second. I have never seen this before, except for the much-cherished British writer Jerome K. Jerome, who of course wrote Three Men in a Boat, which is one of my most favorite books. Mr Jerome used his middle initial to make his name seem less silly. The poor dead man appears not to have had a middle name, so he could not do this. It is the first time in my 27-year police career that I have come across a corpse that has the same name twice, but in this job I believe we must always expect the unexpected.”
From: Liam O’Keefe
To: Harvey Harvey
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.33
Subject: Grim Reaper
Just caught the news. I’m devastated, mate. OK, I kinda knew. I think I might have mentioned it in previous e-mails. But the shock of confirmation is unreal. Gotta go and drink a toast to your memory. You don’t seem to have much in. It’ll just have to be Orangina to. Seems fitting somehow.
From: Bill Geddes
To: Kazu Makino
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.36
Subject: Where the hell are you?
Been trying your phone. Left you half a dozen messages. Have you switched it off? DC’s all set to fire you, but I reckon if you get in by 12 and make the GIT meeting, I could square things with him. I know Don’s in a bad situation, but there’s no need for you to lose your job as well.
From: Brett Topolski
To: Liam O’Keefe
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.37
Subject: All right, all right, I’ll tell you
Your silence is a wailing fucking cacophony in my head. Just to get you off my case, I’ll tell you about Vince.
He’s fallen in love.
That, you might argue, is a Positive Thing—the calming influence of a good woman and the fact that at last he can have his perpetual horniness tended to by someone consenting. I’d agree, absolutely. But if I tell you who he’s fallen in love with ...
The capo di tutti i capi out here is a guy called Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. You might have heard of him—like you, he’s a keen follower of the horses. The guy has several billion in the bank, multiple wives and getting on for twenty kids. He’s the Daddy all right.
I know what you’re thinking, but no, Vince isn’t seeing his daughter. That would be silly, wouldn’t it? Rash beyond words. A fucking death sentence. Even he’s not that stupid, is he? He’s done the sensible thing for once in his life.
He’s only dating the Sheikh’s second cousin’s youngest. Still proper Arab royalty though, the stuff of romance novels and OK! deals. Oh, and true-life TV movies that end in decapitation for one or both of the lovers.
But he’s besotted and claims she is too. He’s old enough to know better, but she’s only nineteen—clearly a young and unworldly nineteen, if she’s dozy enough to think Vince is a catch. Admittedly she does have the most stunning eyes—the only bit I’ve seen—but I don’t care how gorgeous the rest of her is, it’s utter madness and it has to stop. Apart from anything else, we’ve got a stack of work to do, a campaign for Gatorade to finish by end of play, but as I write he’s Photoshopping cherubs and roses onto pink satin cushions. I suppose it’s an advance on the usual (retouching Kate Winslet’s head on to a porn star’s jizsplattered body), but IT HAS TO STOP!
He won’t listen to me though. He says they’re going to elope and get married. Vegas, he reckons. I suggested he should nuke every taboo and go the whole hog: get a sex change and have a lesbian wedding in Tel Aviv. The idiot took me seriously and he’s checking out the visa situation.
Will you have a word with him? He might listen to you. And if he doesn’t, you could come over here and help me get him home. Drugged and bundled into a sack if necessary. Help me, mate. I’m all out of ideas.
Allah Sheedy
From: Dotty Podidra
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.45
Subject: Lighting-up time
David has asked me to remind all you smokers that you have ten minutes.
From: Dotty Podidra
To: Róisín O’Hooligan
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.47
Subject: Message for Slobodan
Hi Roisin. Can you ask Slobodan to move his car from outside the building? David has only just told me we need the space free for the client’s ambulance. Thanks.
From: Roisin O’Hooligan
To: Dotty Podidra
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.48
Subject: Re: Message for Slobodan
Ambulance? Excuse me??
From: Dotty Podidra
To: Róisín O’Hooligan
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.49
Subject: Re: Message for Slobodan
David informed me (all rather last-minute, I’m afraid) that Carter Bluewash (GIT Prez) has “a chronic lung condition” and travels everywhere with a nurse and an oxygen tent.
From: Roisin O’Hooligan
To: Dotty Podidra
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.51
Subject: Re: Message for Slobodan
Slobby is (grudgingly) moving his hire car as I type. BTW, what’s this Carter guy do again? Oh yes, he runs a great big tobacco company. As ye sow, etc.
From: David Crutton
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 11.54
Subject: I am the Pied Piper
I am now leaving the building for a well-earned cigarette. All you smokers will follow me out like the Hamelin rats.
From: Dotty Podidra
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 12.06
Subject: Shh!
The GIT clients are now in the building. David has asked me to tell you to be super-quiet for the duration, and also to look super-hardworking just in case any of them pop out for a wander/toilet break!
Thanks!
Dotty Podidra
Assistant to David Crutton
From: Sally Wilton
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 12.07
Subject: Interns
All available interns wanted urgently out front for smoke-wafting and butt-sweeping.
Thank you for your cooperation.
From: Lorraine Pallister
To: Liam O’Keefe
Sent: 26 January 2009, 12.27
Subject: Twat
I can’t escape from you, can I? This place has been overrun by two dozen Turkish thugs looking for you. Why have they come to my place of work? Oh, that’s right, because you must have told the bastards about me. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the BB auditions have been completely disrupted. If I end up losing my job because of this, I will make it my mission to find you and kill you. Honestly, you’ll be running to the Turks for sanctuary.
Thanks for nothing, Liam, and fuck you to hell.
From: Róisín O’Hooligan
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 12.59
Subject: Did someone call an ambulance ...
... or is it just more clients arriving?
Róisín
Reception
From: Bill Geddes
To: Liam O’Keefe
Sent: 26 January 2009, 13.49
Subject: GIT debrief
What’s the usual client reaction to a creative presentation? Something anodyne in my experience, a carefully worded non-opinion designed not to contradict the later view of anyone more important.
What’s the best response I’ve ever had? After I’d shown him a campaign for cat litter, the marketing director of GPC Pet Products told me (sotto voce) that he had an erection, but that was possibly because the aircon was set to refrigerate and our account exec’s nipples came up like a pair of dials on a valve radio.
Anyway, that was only the best response until today. Today, my friend, your wonderful work for Mini Montana elicited such paroxysms of joy from the President of Galax International Tobacco that he died.
Start at the beginning: the guy, Carter Bluewash, arrived in a wheelchair with a nurse and a mobile intensive-care unit. Apparently, he has diseased lungs (I know, the delicious irony) and he was a virtual corpse. It was like presenting to Mason Verger in Hannibal. Or to an actual corpse. Since we could only see him through the polythene curtain of his portable oxygen tent, it was impossible to read his body language. TB presented your campaign to a soundtrack of wheezes and rasps—hard to tell whether they were noises of approval or death rattles.
When he was done, it was my turn to unveil Hannah “Mini” Montana. Your video montage was a triumph. He was out of his wheelchair and clawing at the polythene. His nurse, who till then had sat quietly in the corner knitting, tried to calm him down. That was when his heart monitor stopped beeping and he collapsed. The nurse did CPR but got nowhere. She was set to pronounce him dead—a proper ER moment—when Zlatan shoved her out of the way and started thumping the guy in the chest. Really fucking hard! I actually heard ribs splinter. Nothing doing. The old git was dead. You killed a client, Liam. Isn’t that amazing? He was actually dead!
But Zlatan wasn’t done. He stood up, grabbed my laptop and slammed it down on the Bluewash heart. It worked a treat. The guy came back to life like Lazarus or Gary Barlow. He took a huge intake of breath that made my ears pop and sat bolt upright. Then he looked at DC and wheezed, “Cost this puppy, Crutton. If you can make the numbers work, you have a green light.” He added one further rider (dinner à deux with Miley Cyrus) before fainting again.
He has several shattered ribs that, given his age and fragility, will probably never heal. But he isn’t dead, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it? Paramedics arrived and stretchered him out, then it was backslaps and champagne all round. DC promised a knighthood to Zlatan and TB offered a toast to you and Harvey. I think all is forgiven.
Wish you were here. Honestly, the whole thing was so staggering that my jaw is still scraping the floor.
Oh, when you do come back in, I think it might be timely to ask for a raise—screw the recession.
Yours in shock and awe,
Bill
PS: DC has a tattoo. On his neck. What is that all about?
PPS: And rumor has it he’s gay. Can’t say I’m convinced by that one.
PPPS: Zlatan completely fucked my laptop, but seeing how handy he is with a punch, I won’t be sending him the bill. He reckons he learned his Lazarus trick from Ratko Miadic, the Bosnian Serb war crim who’s still on the run. “It either work like the dream or put motherfucker out of misery,” he said. Too right.
From: David Crutton
To: All Staff
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.17
Subject: GIT
We have just had an excellent meeting with GIT, who accepted unreservedly all our strategic and creative recommendations. This success puts the agency on an international stage and bodes well in a time of profound economic uncertainty.
I would like to thank all those involved, especially Bill Geddes who bravely took up the baton after Donald Gold’s shocking betrayal. Congratulations must also be extended to Ted Berry and his creative team of Liam O’Keefe, Harvey Harvey, Zlatan
Kovacevic and Adrijana Smiljanić. Zlatan deserves a special mention for his demonstration of stupendous extra-box thinking. Buy him a beer and ask him to show you a use for a Toshiba laptop that isn’t in the owner’s manual!
Well done, one and all. This is a terrific start to the New Year.
From: Bill Geddes
To: Kazu Makino
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.18
Subject: You missed a treat
The client died, came back to life and bought the campaign wholesale. You really had to be there. Whatever, I reckon this would be a good time for you to duck back in because DC is in a rare forgiving mood.
From: Kazu Makino
To: Bill Geddes
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.20
Subject: Re: You missed a treat
OK, you’re a complete arsehole and I’m not talking to you any more, but I’m so excited that I’ve got to tell you where I am. The anteroom of the Oval Office! Yes, the actual Oval Office in the actual White House!! Better sign off. Hillary is looking at me like she thinks my BlackBerry is a terrorist IED.
Sent from my BlackBerry
From: Janice Crutton
To: David Crutton
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.22
Subject: Noah
His passport has gone missing. I’m sure it was with the others in the study. This can only mean he’s taken it, which can only mean he’s left the country. Clearly, the “Queer” tattoo has triggered an emotional crisis. You’re the last person I want to reach out to, but I’m really worried. Please do something. I would, but I have to take Tam to hospital. Her temperature has gone off the scale.
From: Bill Geddes
To: Kazu Makino
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.23
Subject: Re: You missed a treat
Excuse me? What the hell are you doing in the Oval Office?
From: Kazu Makino
To: Bill Geddes
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.25
Subject: Re: You missed a treat
What do you think I’m doing? Interviewing for a temp job? I’m meeting the Prez, you twit. Gotta go. I’m on.
Sent from my BlackBerry
From: David Crutton
To: Dotty Podidra
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.27
Subject: Family stuff
Send flowers for Tamara to all west London hospitals (not sure which one she’s in). And put out an APB for Noah.
From: Lorraine Pallister
To: Liam O’Keefe
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.35
Subject: You’re still a twat, but ...
... now I’m worried. Why are Turkish gangsters looking for you? I guess it’s not to buy you a beer. Are you all right? Where are you? Get in touch. Just to let me know.
From: Bill Geddes
To: Liam O’Keefe
Sent: 26 January 2009, 14.40
Subject: The day that keeps on giving
It just keeps on getting better. You got a special mention in DC’s all-staffer. And I had an e from Kaz. Guess where she is.
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