Special edition 2: Mark Webber puts the 'mark' in market square

Now that I've finally recovered from the excitement of breathlessly meeting Jenson Button for a few seconds, the quest for journalistic integrity yesterday sent me back to the rolling green hills of my hometown to interview Red Bull’s Mark Webber. Having previously blown my proverbial load of dignity in the face of Jenson, I was determined that round 2 of ‘meet your heroes’ would pass altogether more smoothly.

Andy and I arrived fashionably early and full of AMT coffee and West Cornwall pasties to find a village square on the cusp of darkness but devoid of fanatical followers of festive cheer, save for a man selling hot dogs and the pointless sparkly plastic wand merchandise that has become a staple of any British after dark event. With 15 minutes to spare until our slot with Mark, and with still no idea how to work the video camera or a definitive list of questions, we ducked in to my former local for a quick pint and last minute planning session.

The rendezvous point arranged with Mark’s PR was a smart menswear shop which, despite being opposite my parents’ house, I’d never had cause to enter. Village rumour is that Noel Edmonds himself buys his shirts there, and such calibre was undoubtedly reflected in the loudness and dizzying colours of their goods. In amongst the throng, signing autographs for cowlicked village children, we found the man himself, with a jaw so chiselled as to put Jenson’s status as public heartthrob number 1 to the test.

Encouraged by free champagne, Mark’s lovely PR Ann, and Andy’s steadycam magic, we dived in for the interview. A lack of chairs meant I was kneeling rather awkwardly on the carpet in front of Mark, while Andy posed behind me filming, desperately trying to not get my ‘non-international face’ (copyright Kate) on screen. The full details of our discussion will be posted here at a later date in video form, but regular readers will be pleased to know that I kept my cool throughout and didn’t once reduce myself to slobbering fanboy antics (except in this picture).



About 5 minutes in we realised we were holding up a lot of kids, over-eager store staff and local busybodies on the autograph trail. The interview was curtailed and we scurried to the market square where a crowd had gathered by a temporary stage set up by a Christmas tree not much larger than most advent calendar chocolates. Andy’s incessant filming of ‘scenic’ shots (dogs and old ladies’ legs) meant we only just arrived in time for the predictable playing of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ as our hero disembarked his crutches and limped onto the podium.

From our privileged position behind the scenes, we were treated to a thrilling insight into the intricacies of Christmas light switching on. “Now Mark, I’m going to give you this control, it doesn’t do anything, but just make sure you press it nice and high so I can see it, and I’ll flip the real switch at the same time.” Underwhelming admittedly, but still, following a short speech and emphatic pushing of the fake button, the early dusk was bathed in a warm electric glow to feverish applause. Christmas carol season was officially on, and the curious village folk drawn out of their houses by the kerfuffle slowly dispersed whilst bopping along to the seasonal sounds of Wizzard and Slade.

Nemesis Update: how many different scarves can one man own? It’s getting ridiculous.

Special edition: How to appear suave* when meeting Jenson Button

This week’s episode leaves behind office politics, flooded basements and drinking from a Treasure Chest in Prince William’s favourite London haunt to focus on yesterday’s adventures in London’s West End (well, mostly in the dusty corridors and creepy festive animatronic filled spaces behind the scenes of Selfridges) which culminated in a seminal moment: having a book signed by Jenson Button.

Opportunity knocked due to some sporadic time wasting in the morning leading to the discovery that Britain’s newest world champion, and second most sports newsworthy man of the week (with due deference to Ireland’s favourite Thierry Henry) would be initialling copies of his new book in London at 6pm sharp. Surely I’d be able to use some industry connections to secure a one on one slot with Jenson? Well no as it turned out, so instead I found myself sadly in the kind of line generally reserved for theme parks and Michael Jackson’s memorial service.

Special mention here must go to my two queuing allies, Jess and Janet (admirable dedication to provide husbands with the perfect festive gift), who were a valuable ally to my sanity, and provided crucial life lessons on how to blag opportunities if you don’t have the right coloured wristband. Kudos also to the conversational intro of a mistaken (deliberate) prod of my backside.

So, after 2 hours, as we neared the man himself, shielded behind a wall of beefcakes to prevent anyone punching him in the chops (a la Leona) and sectioned off behind a velvet rope behind from which hundreds of people were doing nothing more than staring and updating their Facebook statuses (‘blah blah is looking at Jenson Button!’ ‘so and so likes this’), I lined up my priorities: killer question? Check. T-shirts to sign? Check. Business card poised? Check. Shameless colleague name dropping for preferential treatment planned? Check. Jess poised with camera to capture the moment for posterity? Check. Video camera in hand for absolute nerdish fanboy credit? Check. Composure? Crucially missing in action.

Here’s a transcript of the moment itself:

Jenson: Hi how are you?
Me: Hi yeah good thanks
Jenson: (flashes winning smile – the housewives favourite) Great. (notices me struggling to hold my jacket, bag, book, camera and extract T shirts to sign) Wow you’re trying to do a lot
Me: Yep. Lucky I’m so good at juggling.
Jenson: Erm, yeah.
Me: So I work for F1 Rocks, any chance you can sign some T-shirts for a competition?
Jenson: Oh cool yeah sure, leave them with-
Security: Ok sir move along now please

And then a meaty arm in the back led me away. Had I accomplished any of my aims without coming across as a stuttering moron? No. Had I taken the ‘me and my mate Jenson’ money shot picture which should have adorned this post and my bedroom wall? Likewise no. However, the day was saved by the interjection of Jenson’s (we’re on first name terms now for sure) PA Jules, who clearly took pity on me, and promised to have Jenson sign a couple of F1 Rocks shirts and get them sent to me. We even exchanged business cards in a definite high point of my corporate career. Boy the nemesis would have been proud. I might have to buy a rolodex soon to cope with the weight of the 4 cards I’ve collected on rare occasions of being allowed out of Hammersmith..

Anyway, no regrets. And we’re lining up an assault on Mark Webber for 2 weeks time. Can I overcome my crippling stuttering in the face of icons, or will another photo opportunity pass me by? Time will tell. And for all you housewives out there, here’s the one picture I took that came out..



*replace with ‘bumbling chump’ as required

New Adventures in Lunch

So this week’s adventures have taken me on voyages away from the safe haven of Hammersmith (and the odd state of amiable truce with the legal bods) to the busy and distressingly Christmas light filled world of Soho. I scheduled my first ever solo business meeting (which required a pretence of a sheen of professionalism for a whole three minutes), discussed rock, roll and 80s Grand Prix politics over a so-called rostrum shoot (making bits of newspaper spin theatrically a la 50s B movies) and came distressingly close to repeating my foible of a couple of months ago of breaking a string on a guitar I had no business playing.

However, the fineries of Soho extend far beyond fresh air and dodging animal rights activists with their steely glares and determination to speak to me no matter how loud my headphones, and mostly towards a glittering array of lunch options that take Hammersmith’s finest Pizza Hut all-you-can eat (and the 8 plate challenge) and wipe the floor with it. Il Burrito, I salute you. Also a tip of the hat to the subservient servants who blessed my afternoon helping cut a sales promo with limitless tea, chocolate and ice cold water. It seems the editing industry is no different to any other, in that the path to success is lined with a litany of teabags and unyielding politeness in the face of your bosses’ most pointless demands.

I did get to try my hand at an oft maligned art form though: the voiceover. My debut audition in the field was to try and blag a slot reciting a lengthy list of superlatives about F1 Rocks, but in the end my attempt at gravelly movie style (inspired by Sky Sports football trailers) was beaten into second place by Kate’s Saaaf London sales pitch. In a role in which I’d always felt my dulcet tones were created to make waves, test one was an inglorious fail.

Nemesis update: How can I be friends with anyone who doesn’t know ‘Danger High Voltage’ by Electric Six? Maybe we’re about to hit a politeness recession.. Watch this space.

Long Time Coming

Having ignored the clamouring of the online community for long enough, it’s high time to return to my pen and scribe the post-Singapore chapter of the F1 Rocks story. Or at least the inner wranglings of the office and golden nuggets of info about what happens next.. Or my off topic musings on whatever subject comes to me first. Probably the latter.

So anyway, Singapore was amazing. Or so I hear. The view from my desk of a desolate wasteland that used to be a fully functioning office probably ran the panorama from the top floor penthouse of the Raffles hotel close, but having only seen the latter in pictures I’m sure the view of the racetrack, even obscured as it was by mountains of room service and free dressing gowns, just about lives up to my vista, which is incidentally dominated by the coat rack. Not that I hold a grudge of course; there was dirty, filthy disgusting work to be done in London, and I’m sure following Jacky Cheung’s set vicariously on Twitter more than made up for missing out on seeing his flailing grey locks light up the Fort Canning stage.

But anyhow, the lack of pan-Asian action from my point of view doesn’t dim my enjoyment of the event, it just means I missed out on the added bonuses such as ‘accidentally’ slipping into shot on various red carpet and stage pieces, illuminating Lindsay Lohan on the intricate workings of a promotional telephone in her suite, boldly discovering a shocking secret about the stage nous of one of the F1 Rocks headliners (miming!), missing the whole event due to a crisis with rapidly rotating sponsorship balloons, bouncing on Beyonce’s bed, or engaging in a Fawlty Towers esque game of ‘hide the room service’ as the chief of financial purse strings for Universal tried to hold a midnight board meeting while across the suite various colleagues engaged in displays of company credit card opulence..

So now that’s all said and done, F1 Rocks HQ is in a state of flux, waiting for various artists (some people’s hips don’t lie, some are planning reunion shows according to the tabloids, and some may or may not have had a wardrobe malfunction on The X Factor on Sunday) and venues to confirm themselves for 2010 (although someone on Twitter today claimed to have seen us in Montreal, so clearly someone higher up the company ladder needs to work on their stealth). Luckily we somehow managed to find time to have a return to the members club of yore, which resulted in me repatriating Flirtini (manliest of all drinks) on my new purple shoes.. I’ll try to avoid such indignity at the Christmas party if at all possible.

Nemesis Update: in the dark hours of solitude enforced by the global navigation of 98% of my colleagues we bonded, and sadly I think the nemesis term may have been thrown around too hastily in the first instance. Although ‘chum update’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Suggestions for enemies on a postcard please. We now resemble the following:

F1 Rocks Singapore (the view from the office)

Another evening: the Champions League being illegally streamed in the background, the wife out of town, no food in the fridge and the end of summer arriving through a spectacular deluge that combined horribly with the holes in my shoes can only mean one thing: time to scribe.

Then again, tonight can’t come close to matching the all night 37 hour shift special that accidentally happened the other week (although on the upside I have inherited a very nice towel from that evening and I again had the pleasure of using the office shower). Annoyingly many of those hours were spent away from the infinity speed broadband comforts of the office due to security (I did consider hiding and camping before realising that the door to the toilets is locked overnight, and neither did I fancy an Entrapment esque web of motion sensors to contend with), although armed with a beer watching the tennis at John’s house things could have been worse. Having incurred the curses of a furious Scandinavian through the night, the awkward small talk with our bearded post room manager at 5:55am waiting for the office to open actually turned out to be the worst part of the experience..

Anyway, I got off lightly compared to some lately. Steve’s never-ending battle with his design agency finally came to a head involving a lot of capital letters and some phone slamming. Another colleague was strip searched at Heathrow airport flying out to Singapore for business having repeatedly set off the security alarms. The incriminating evidence was later discovered to be in the area of bosom support. The mental image of this event is joyously excellent in a cartoonish kind of way.

Speaking of Singapore, that’s where most of the workforce are based these days indulging in what I can only imagine to be an endless succession of the sort of parties seen in the juicy bits of free newspapers. The actual evidence suggests otherwise, indicating a lot of hard work with nine days to go until Da Mouth kick off F1 Rocks and numerous diva demands to cater for. The newspapers in England have recently run made up in house stories including the suggestion that Beyonce will take a 37 second helicopter flight from her hotel to the stage, and that there’ll be an after party on a 71st storey helipad with every chance of a Black Eyed Pea or two plummeting to their doom. These rumours may not escape the stringent filtering of the Singapore press, and neither would my recent digging which has unearthed the gold that one F1 Rocks artist checks into hotels under the pseudonym ‘Dixie Normous’ (say it out loud if you don’t get it. Although not if you’re in the library).

Nemesis update: The original content of this paragraph was deemed too incriminating on my behalf, so I’ll diplomatically say that I’ve discovered when not furiously maintaining personal hygiene, the nemesis engages in activity that screams ‘corporate high flyer’ even more the driving an open-topped Porsche along a mountain road with a busty blonde in the front seat or having a basketball hoop over the waste paper bin.

Time to go finish the Champions League and brave the deluge, although undoubtedly I’ll spend most of the night trying to ignore the incessant whirring of my new fangled Blackberry, a sign that I’m well on the way to replicating the nemesis’ corporate stylings…

P.S. I just heard that one of the F1 Rocks artists wants a brand of chewing gum flown in from England before they’ll take the stage in Singapore.. A trident strike? I’ll believe it when I see it..

My Kingdom for a Blackberry!

I’m squinting through tears of tiredness as I sit in a deserted office listening to Radiohead, thinking that the Subway sandwich (Sub of the day of course – Tuesday = Meatball Marinara Madness) that constituted dinner was a long time ago, and wishing I was on a sofa with the home made Crunchie ice cream that the wife knocked up earlier. Alas. But with the morning comes a fresh onslaught of strife direct to my inbox, so I have to make the most of these lulls, even if they only come about at 9:40 pm. I do actually have a sleeping bag in my bottom draw, cereal on my desk and a gloriously futuristic shower on the seventh floor should the worst happen..

So anyway, there are too many things and not enough people: a great ratio when applied to food, but terrible when applied to tasks. Mistakes are creeping into our work and mental psyche. Kate keeps emailing the Black Eyed Peas’ manager when she means to drop me a note as we have similar names. A colleague who shall remain nameless submitted their subscription to the Daily Mail for me to process as an expenses claim earlier (this could explain their general agitated state – Jon Gaunt can’t be good for high blood pressure). I’ve been adding really simple tasks such as ‘getting a glass of water’ to my daily to-do list so I can enjoy the rare satisfaction of ticking things off more often. Another nameless colleague has been accused of foul play by their partner who can’t believe that working so late comes as standard. Even my pin up of Jenson’s girlfriend doesn’t give me the same rush of pleasure anymore…

(Stopped writing here as Frank, our ever surly security guard, tired of my protestations of homelessness and turfed me out into the night).

I’m resuming now a day later, full of jacket potato (topped with beans and tuna – killer combo) and doom mongering chat about job security at lunch, and feeling much brighter. Perhaps it’s the realisation that it’s not my fault that the extranet is doomed (I’m just a mouthpiece for a lousy system – like Barack Obama with fewer nuclear capabilities). Maybe it’s the fact that my Crunchie ice cream hadn’t yet set and was essentially a yoghurt of condensed milk and cream. Could be that I’m cheered by the homeless guy meandering down King Street yelling ‘I AM ENGLISH’ at foreign looking folk. I think it’s more to do with the fact that it’s the middle of the afternoon, and although my taste in depressing music hasn’t changed (Elliott Smith today), I’ve concluded that my overall happiness is now constrained by the volume of, and anger expressed in, my inbox, and the emotional rollercoasters of my colleagues, which permeate Dementor style through to me.

Anyway, enough pontificating on my PMS, I have to go and indulge my growing fixation on Pixie Lott, which has been fuelled by a 40ft billboard of her being put up next to the office. I think Mrs Button may have a pin-up rival before too long..

Nemesis Update:

19/08/09 - To me, U2

Fresh from solving my lunch riddle by combining carbs and salad in some kind of jacket potato goliath, I’m taking this opportunity to draw some breath, turn up The Dead Weather and ignore my emails long enough to do what I was hired for (sic), and update the world on the goings on at F1 Rocks HQ.

Distressingly, that’s three straight meals at my desk, including dinner last night and brunch this morning and conveniently forgetting my bagel (sliced in true American wannabe style by my bagel slicer – I don’t have internet or a television but all about the culinary accessories) from this morning. Last night’s post watershed working special did come with the consolation prize of finding a stray box decorated with pornography in the street as I left, which I approached with caution a la Morgan Freeman in Se7en, only to disappointingly find plastic bags instead of Gwyneth Paltrow’s head (or more transport friendly ‘reading’ material).


Combine this futility with the truly terrible haircut I received last week (too short at the back, too long at the front), which left me resembling an extra from Coneheads in a Johnny Borrell wig, my haphazard attempts at securing somewhere to live beyond the next two weeks, and missing an explosion that apparently shook the building (potential chance to enlist disaster movie survival 101), I’d almost go as far to say it was nearly a lousy week. However, the perks of employment here reared their head again when a Friday afternoon whip round produced some luxury seats to see U2 at Wembley – two of which were handed to me, and although not a single person in the office cared to spend the evening in close quarters listening to MOR ‘rock’ music with me, my constantly bewildered flatmate Jack was more than happy to leave his grind at the Job Centre early and act as my accomplice.

(Lengthy pause of writing here lasting almost a day – distracted by a meeting with the Three Wise Men from our digital agency. New music choice: The Strokes ‘Is This It’ – oldie but a goodie)

Again, my lack of slickness when faced with VIP style situations where one is supposed to act suave resulted in refusing to believe that we could possibly be seated in an area attended by security guards, and the usual autograph hungry slobbering when confronted with someone I recognised from television (‘Holy smoke! It’s Eddie Jordan!’). U2 themselves washed over me in a wave of indifference, they’re not a band I have any allegiance to, but I begrudgingly admit to howling along with the massed ranks during ‘In the Name of Love’, and I couldn’t fail to be impressed by the space station that passed for a stage (see below). Although not as delighted as I was with the tog rating on our seat cushions… God bless the joys of VIP treatment.



Nemesis update: the enemy is out of the country topping up his fake tan with some real sunlight. My mind’s eye conjures up Wham’s ‘Club Tropicana’ video as an indication of how he’ll be spending his time.

I was getting ready today to move desks to cohabit with the freakishly tall new legal intern, but rank has been pulled and I’m staying put, which probably comes in handy for general spying and subterfuge, but is less useful for things such as playing loud music, making personal calls, illicit social networking and whiling away the hours staring pointlessly out of the window. Not that I’m sulking. Anyhow, back to my morning of drafting invites for VIPs and VVIPs (and probably VVVIPs too – although I’m not sure who’d have such a status – Dolph Lundgren if I had my way), staring lovingly at my teenage boy style pinup of Jenson Button’s mistress, and pretending I know how to use Excel.

Launch Week 5/8/09

Apparently F1 Rocks went live and dangerous this week and was unleashed upon the world. Hooray for us. I’d always assumed that launch events and press conferences at glamorous hotels as seen in the newspapers were quick and easy to organise, but our astoundingly devout and thorough, yet ad-hoc approach, put the ‘ic’ in ridiculous, and has left me exhausted and looking like a thinner, mulleted version of Skeletor (well, I am Master of the Extranet Universe I suppose).

So we worked silly hours on the weekend (much to the dismay of the security guard who refused to be bribed with pizza and just wanted to get home to his wife and kids), until midnight on Monday before the launch, and those lucky enough to have Blackberrys were probably squinting furiously at them in the red morning light as news of yet another alteration to the logo broke from Asia. As someone who watches disaster movies and imagines themselves being awesome in high stakes peril, I always figured I’d find my niche when under siege. I genuinely enjoyed the manic days, whether it was my over-exuberant explanations of Subway’s condiment range to those in the office who were new to the sandwich phenomenon, breaking a string on a priceless Gibson Les Paul delivered to the office for the launch and stuffing it back in the case hoping nobody would notice, debating the best choices for a fantasy football team for the new season over takeout Pad Thai and beer in the boardroom or stealing paper bags from the cafe to load with goodies for the world’s press to take home with them in a spectacularly low budget solution to a branding oversight, I definitely ended up with enough material to write a genius sitcom about office life. Oh, wait.

The nemesis just walked into a pillar. I’m grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat with a warm bowl of cream in front of a hot fireplace on a winter’s day…

The launch went well enough to facilitate some kind of celebratory drink or two, and to my surprise this meant making my wide-eyed private members club debut. Distressingly, having not been briefed that this could be a location, and having not been dressed up to attend the launch as I was manning the office, I was less than impressively attired in my homemade ‘Jigga-what’ T shirt (a supposedly ironic play on a Jay-Z song title as I’m not a fan of hip and hop music). I stuck out somewhat amongst the shirts and jackets, but put it behind me long enough to mistake Fearne Cotton for Katherine Jenkins, and then proceed to play it cool by continually trying to catch her eye over the top of my champagne flute, which as I discovered is the worst of all beverage containers to try and hide behind. For some reason I go to pieces when confronted by famous folk, like the time I gushingly invited We Are Scientists for dinner and cocktails at a cross dressing Dutchman’s house.

Anyway, I need to get back on it, there’s a legion of new staff who are outshining me a little too thoroughly and I need to compete on an activity front, especially as I can’t contend with their clean cut crisply pressed shirts..

Welcome to the office - 31/7/09

Welcome to the madhouse, where those whose brains haven’t yet been addled by the incessant pressure of deadlines, overly efficient and enthusiastic Asian rival employees (and delicious Asian snacks perched on my desk), and the caffeine intake required by successive 7 – 7 days are off having babies or negotiating with Britain’s public enemy number one: the swine flu. Or continuing their idyllic sojourns to exotic locations under the pretence of work. Having never been on a business trip to anywhere beyond the postroom, I feel perfectly well positioned to judge them from afar as a holiday where you wear a suit to the beach and take your blackberry out to dinner instead of your wife, but a holiday nonetheless.

The countdown clock on the website shows an ominous 54 days until Singapore, so I guess our current candle burning is a necessary evil, especially with our launch on Monday, featuring celebs, an excellent PR stunt (check the streets outside the Metropolitan Hotel in London on Monday), and international syndication to match the Singaporean press meaning we’re flat out to get all the assets for our artists delivered on time. Luckily for me, occasionally this means I get added into emails that reveal passport pictures of international icons, which are always worth a giggle, although the Americans definitely don’t seem as strict as us on the whole ‘no hats in your passport picture’ thing. As the old saying goes, it’s one rule for ZZ Top..

Sorry, I just had to pause for a mass premiere viewing of a press release video featuring Lady Gaga, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, and a contagious Black Eyed Peas song around my desk, which seems an odd place to gather for such an event, but I guess everyone is following their noses to the Asian snacks..

So what do we actually busy doing? I’ve been employed as a part time travel agent and bloodhound of artist paraphanalia, while donning my extranet guru glasses and trying to harmonise content while providing the occasional morale boosting dose of sarcastic wit (pure Brent that sentence), opposite me Andy has spent most of his day negotiating furiously with the potential manufacturers of a giant cake to be adorned with the Singapore flag, and Steve to my left has had a fun time trying to cajole some much needed competency out of our hapless creative designer. Damn logistics. But on a depleted office team of 11, there’s no room for task snobbery. So I think we’re storing up a pretty large quota of glitz and glamour for Singapore, as it seems to have been in absentia lately.

I did find the time to make an arch nemesis this week though, which was an important development as I haven’t had one since exchanging furious stares with a foe across my dissertation notes in the university library. I’m a big believer in balancing the general goodwill I express with unbridled and illogical hatred towards the occasional individual, and I believe from my vantage point here I’ve successfully found a victim for my vitriol (anyone remember them from the late ‘90s?).I’ll update on this situation as it develops, hopefully to some kind of showdown..

Anyway, my belly is rumbling – I’ve got a fever, and screw tamiflu, the only prescription is prawn crackers.