The Irish Tales

Second Life (12)
　
"Damn. I wish I hadn’t done that." Regrettably, we all have at some point in our lives. Opened one’s mouth too soon, posted that letter, sent that email or text; written in haste, in anger or intoxication. (Usually the last, in my case.)
Only to awake the next day with an inexplicable feeling of impending doom, which rapidly became quite explicable as the events of the previous night came hurtling back.
It’s even more common these days, with instant communications to anyone, anywhere, at any time, thanks to those evil twins the internet and the mobile phone.
Quite often, fortunately, the reality is never quite as bad as one imagines at 5.30 am, tossing and turning in sweat-stained sheets, whilst that sharp thing belonging to Damocles hovers ever lower.
(He was damn careless with that sword, you know. I seem to have bumped into it everywhere in my First Life.)
Even so, the hopeless urge to take back everything immediately and pretend it never happened still sends shivers up my spine.
Years ago, I worked on a huge, national grocer’s account, which was one of the most valuable and important pieces of business the agency had and it was considered an honour and a golden opportunity to snaffle one of the briefs.
(I’d better not say which one, in case anyone reading this has a long memory.)
Anyway, we got this Sainsbury’s brief to write a double page colour spread for their own-brand tawny port.
Now, I drank a lot of port at the time and naturally, there were some sample bottles provided. Goodness knows what happened to them. But I feel they must have been put to good use, for fairly quickly we came up with what we thought was a cracker of an idea.
All I recall now is that it featured an owl, a tawny owl presumably. It was a long time ago, dear Reader.
We were jubilant. The creative director liked it, the account team liked it, the secretary who typed out my copy liked it. (Very important this; in the era before pcs, one had a secretary to type out the copy properly and if she didn’t like it, it would go to bottom of her to-do tray.)
There was just one small problem – the client hated it. On sight.
As we were out to lunch for the rest of the day, we didn’t actually get told the bad news until the next morning and there was worse to come.
We needed a new idea overnight to meet the long lead time then required for print advertising.
Seething, we got down to it as good pros must, but our hearts were not in it. By 5pm, we’d cobbled up something which got grudging approval from everyone involved. Even the client.
That just left the small matter of body copy. Al went off to organise a product shoot and I was left staring at a blank sheet of paper. I really, really didn’t want to do this, not one bit.
At 8pm, Jeremy the account director appeared at my office door.
"Anything yet, squire?" he grinned at me. I ignored him and after while, he wandered away.
It was then that the iron entered my soul, the red mist descended and I rebelled.
I typed away furiously for some twenty minutes or so, then rang Jeremy and told him to come get it.
He skimmed it quickly, nodded and said, "Thank you, old horse. leave it with me," and vanished.
The moment he left, I had a fit of the giggles. Oh my oh my, what a clever boy was I ! I drove home still giggling at my wickedness, my sheer colossal ingenuity. And proceeded to get monumentally drunk.
Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord and He’s quite right. I woke at around 6am, with a massive hangover and the afore-mentioned sharp thing dangling just about my throat.
Why, why……oh why did I do it, I thought miserably as the memory flooded back.
The copy I gave Jeremy was an acrostic. Put simply, the first letter of each sentence spelled out another sentence completely.
In this case : Shame about the owl ad.
I was aghast at my own stupidity and unbelievable arrogance. I had to do something at once.
I got up, dressed and drove to the office for 7.30 am. Naturally, there was nobody there. I rang Jeremy’s office every 15 minutes, to no avail.
In between times, I sat there sweating, smoking and swearing quietly.
I think I’d nodded off for a moment when, at 10.30 am, my door burst open and Jeremy peeked in.
"Thanks for last night, old thing," he beamed at me. "All done and dusted."
I stared at him in horror. "What ?" I croaked.
"Client approved the copy last night and the shot this morning, it’s at the printers now." he sat down and lit a cigarette.
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. He squinted at me through a cloud of smoke.
"Everything all right, old horse ? You look at bit pale."
I’m not sure what replied now, but it was something along the lines of, oh, great, just wanted to tidy up the words a little.
He beamed and stood up. "Too late now. Right then, I’m off to Lords for the Test. You fancy coming on Friday ?"
Without waiting for an answer, he breezed off, leaving me cross-eyed with fear.
Naturally, I worried about nothing. Nobody picked it up at all, not even my art director Al, until I blurted out the awful truth some weeks later. He thought it was a hoot.
It wasn’t until many years later that I told Jeremy what I’d done.
He thought it was hoot, too.
After all this time, it is difficult to recall the misery of the following weeks, whilst I waited for Abbott’s wrath to fall on me.
It never did. Nor did that fucking shiny thing.
In your face, Damocles.
***************************************
This column is for L.C., the hippest TV producer in town. Get well soon. D.R.