Whatever you want

Today, when many people think of Status Quo, they think of Argos. Whatever you want. Yet, when I was growing up, they were one of the leading rock bands of their time, the first band I ever went to see. I can still hear the ringing in my ears thirty four years on. The next time I saw the band I queued up for hours outside the venue, even though I already had a ticket. It was something about the blue denim atmosphere, the flailing hair boogie and all the time in the world. If you shop at Argos you need all the time in the world. I’m at a loss to understand just how this high street brand has stayed the pace, when others, like Woolworth’s, with a longer tradition and a sense of customer loyalty, have not. Back when I was working on the rebranding of Argos earlier this century, there was much talk of moving the retailer out of its comfortable status quo, away from Whatever you want, and towards something a bit more 21st century. Several agencies were forced together for a fission branding exercise that would find this new place to be, this new slogan. We all made our suggestions. I remember one particularly hairy advertising designer flying into a carpet-chewing rage when presented with alternatives to his latest TV ads for Whatever you want. The thing is, as much as they wanted to, nobody could get the rhythm out of their heads. In the end, all that changed was the swoosh of the tail of the S of Argos. It gave the impression of a smile. All still backed up by the good-time boogie of Whatever you want. For the simple reason that Whatever you want was no longer Status Quo, it was Argos. And that was the status quo. The emotional core could not be moved. Not by any logic that said this archaic, time-consuming, Soviet-style ordering, buying and collecting procedure had had its day - a system that had once been the hook, the whole appeal of shopping for everyday items in a different way. But Argos also went online early, whereas Woolworth’s did not. The logistical complexities for both retailers must have been similar. Thousands of hungry suppliers. One coped. The other didn’t. Woolworth’s - a shop where, seemingly, you could also get whatever you wanted. Both brands had this in common. It seemed that you could get whatever you wanted, even though you couldn’t. But Argos reminded consumers that they thought that they could. Whereas Woolworth’s didn’t. So, increasingly, you’d go into Woolworth’s and find all sorts of stuff but nothing you ever wanted; and you wondered what it is they were actually there for…whatever you didn’t want. There is resurrection. But I’m waiting to see what the new online Woolworth’s can offer people that they cannot already get somewhere else from people who have been doing online for years. And what will be the hook? Not the way you buy. Not the range you buy. I’m intrigued. I can’t believe that the reasons business people are resurrecting Woolworth’s online are purely down to a nostalgic belief that this brand should continue to exist. Woolworth’s, it seems to me, is a brand for whom the status quo has changed forever. Anyway, it happens that Status Quo lead guitarist, Francis Rossi, is 60 today. You may remember that, back in March this year, he finally cut off and gave away his trademark ponytail in a competition organised by The Sun. A female 30-year old, ‘long-time’ Status Quo fan won what she had always wanted and could never buy at Argos.


Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Miles

Herbie Hancock said people always remember the first time they heard Miles Davis. For me, it was late September 1987, over a pair of headphones in Stafford Public Library. And I didn’t even know I was listening to Miles Davis. Newly back from a four-month stint in the south of France, where I’d stayed with my long-lost friend, Dean - writing a hopeless novel called She Was Only The Comedian’s Grand-Daughter - I was surprised to discover that the third album from one of my favourite bands, Scritti Politti, was sitting there, waiting for me to find it in, of all places, the library. The track in question on Provision (entitled Oh Patti) contains a haunting solo from Miles, drifting away in the background of a wistful lyric from Green Gartside. I listened to this album for years without realising that this was Miles Davis. Miles Davis would have been 83 today, but he died when he was 65. I do remember what I was doing around the time he died, but I don’t remember his passing. Why would I? Miles Davis meant nothing to me. Only in the past few years has my discovery of jazz been prefaced by his work, alongside the bossa nova rhythms of Stan Getz and A C Jobim. For me, as I sit inevitably at the centre of my own universe, Miles Davis will always be my ticket to a whole planet of music that might have passed me by. And, in the retrograde motion that has been my forties, I thank him for that. As I travel to London this morning, to run a writing workshop, I’ll be sure to play my favourite track, appropriately titled Miles.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

I cried all the way to the chip shop

Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me
I was so upset that I cried all the way to the chip shop
No hope, no harm, just another false alarm
When I came out there was Gordon standing at the bus stop

Now, like you, I reckon I can identify with both sets of lyrics. Personally, I am touched beyond reason that people as far apart and close together as Steven Morrissey and Jilted John could possibly share the same day of birth 50 years ago today. Thanks to Jilted John, I’d long thought that Graham Fellows was a one-off in our cultural milieu. Whereas the boy with the thorn in his side always knew that he had started something he couldn’t finish. Busy as I was, trying in vain to project the image of a serious funster on the world, I shouldn’t have been listening to Jilted John – such a punk parody, although John Peel was the first to champion it. Truth be told, punk was over long before Jilted John hit the airwaves in July 1978. But, very catchy it was. And, let’s face it, if you’ve ever been jilted, Gordon is a moron and it is so unfair. Yeah yeah. (Nobody has ever said this but, of course, Jilted John paved the way for The Undertones. Jimmy Jimmy. My Perfect Cousin. And we know whose favourite band they were!). After seemingly disappearing, the singer of this solitary song made things worse. You must remember Graham Fellows as Les Charlton in Coronation Street - a young biker chasing married Gail Tilsley! Gail didn’t fancy him any more than Julie had. He must have been so upset. But, Graham Fellows has tried very, very hard. More famous to most people as comedy character, John Shuttleworth, since as far back as 1986, a man who has shot TV documentaries aimed at discovering whether UK people are nicer the further north you go or softer the further south. Radio Shuttleworth. The fabled four-part TV series, 500 Bus Stops. In 2007, inspired by Jamie Oliver’s better food for schoolchildren campaign, Shuttleworth toured the UK with a stage show entitled With My Condiments. Later in the same year, he recorded 4 Rather Tasty Tracks in a wardrobe, which actually reached number 96 in the UK charts and number 29 in the indie charts. Apparently, he revived his Jilted John character in the 2008 Big Chill festival, where he joined a line-up including Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Leonard Cohen. You couldn’t make it up. It goes on. After Jilted John and John Shuttleworth comes another character, rock musicologist, Brian Appleton, one of whose claims to fame is being responsible for the gap in Steve Harley’s Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) hit. Now, you’re going to have to visit the website (www.shuttleworths.co.uk/brian/index.html).
Back in 1985, Graham Fellows released an album under his own name, Love at the Hacienda. Apparently, it has a cult following in Japan. I’m not surprised. He’s a man who sounds like a cross between Mike Yarwood and Steve Coogan singing The Buzzcocks’ Greatest Hits. And that’s a greater reality than anything virtual to be found in the gadget shops of Akihabara. As for Mozza, well, there never was a man who could coin longer song titles and still be going strong at such a tender age. There is and remains a mystery to Morrissey, that not even Arthur Conan Doyle, born 150 years ago today, could solve. As there was around the late George Best, who also belongs to this day. Have you ever thought how alike they look…George and Steven? I don’t much care for the besuited gangster persona he’s adopted for the past decade…a love of boxing, references to sporting heroes and obsessions with young skinheads that would get Gary Glitter in trouble. Most of this doesn’t work with a man who claims to have the admirable trait of preferring the company of women to men. But he is allowed to change. His official website shows a man, well-worn, at 50. Yet we remember his words. Of his generation, only Ian Curtis and David Sylvian could compare. If these icons had anything in common, perhaps it was a certain diffidence. Shyness is nice. But shyness can stop you doing all the things in life you’d like to. In my case, it was the 80s that stopped me. Yet the wreck of my 80s would have been even more unbearable without The Smiths. The Smiths appeared in the spring of 1983, exactly at the time I decided that I was too old for pop music and took up cookery instead. We became acquainted with each other because I had made the logical decision that the best way to learn to cook was to become vegetarian. Whereas The Smiths’ first album had passed me by, their second hit me between the eyes. Meat Is Murder said it all in early 1985. I fell in love with Morrissey not so much through his music but through his vegetarianism and accompanying support for animal rights. It was The Smiths’ only album to reach number one in the UK charts. I saw Morrissey live only once. 5th November, 2002. Brixton Academy. Tonight, on his 50th birthday, he’s actually playing live at the Manchester Apollo. Good for him. And him. Steven Morrissey and Graham Fellows. 50 today. These men have touched your lives. Now my heart is full. And I just can’t explain. So, I won’t even try to.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

I so want to go to Chelsea

Speaking to a creative agency acquaintance yesterday I was astonished to discover that he wasn’t attending the current Chelsea Flower Show or even following its progress on TV. Aghast, I asked him how he could hold his head up as a branding consultant without any knowledge of the very best of living design that the planet has to offer – and on his own doorstep, to boot. ‘I get by with a little help from my friends', he replied. I quickly realised that he was celebrating the 65th birthday of Joe Cocker, but, all the same…come on. I note from the diary of my life that it’s five years today that I appeared on Robert Elms’ BBC London radio show, promoting my book, Guinness Is Guinness: the colourful story of a black and white brand. Now, Elms was exactly the kind of person, a self-styled image guru, for whom design, albeit in the world of clothes, was his way in, his ticket to ride. Someone with Chelsea in his back yard who never had the nous to skip off the King's Road and visit the Flower Show and attempt to understand where top design is really at. Come to think of it, I’ve worked with many ‘designers’ who thought that design is what they did at their computers. Or something in the cut of their perfectly rumpled hair. I’ve never met one who has visited Chelsea Flower Show, the foremost exhibition of contemporary design in the world today. OK, there’s outstanding design in the metallic mosaic of Kyoto railway station. And there’s appealing design in the gladdening gleam of the i-Phone. But real, living design only truly exists in the ephemeral gardens of Chelsea Flower Show for one annual week in May. It’s the Hermitage come to life. I don’t want to go to Chelsea/Oh no, it does not move me is the refrain I’ve always heard from graphic designers. Given the blandness and conformity I see in much everyday branding design, I wonder where designers actually get their inspiration from. Chelsea may well be run by a set of stuffed shirts and thronged by representatives of the society of gits, but the quest for bravery in design should pull anyone who really cares about design beyond all that. You haven’t seen a gold medal Chelsea garden, you don’t know what love is.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

It's all in the name

One of the most difficult tasks in branding work is naming. Whether it’s the name of a new company, product or service, or renaming an existing organisational activity or project, it’s often the proverbial poison chalice. I’ve known naming to cause more divisiveness within an organisation than just about any other communications activity. But how come? Surely, all you have to do is pull the appropriate word or phrase out of thin air (alternatively known as the dictionary or thesaurus), go through the legalities and get on with it! Would it were so simple. Sometime it is – the right usable name just jumps out. Although this is rarely the case, this is the model that people seem to have in their heads when commissioning a new name. Perhaps it’s because people think it’s so easy (for a wordsmith) that they relegate it to an unimportant activity, something that really does not require their involvement or consideration. Only today, I received a request to carry out some pro-bono naming for a social enterprise in which the brief stated that the name ‘is secondary to it being a great service – cost-effective, reliable etc – aimed at a mixed audience of business and households’. It’s the ‘secondary’ bit that alarms me. I wonder how the Chief Exec of the organisation briefing me could suggest that something as important as the name of the service could be ‘secondary’. After all, in the minds of its target audience, the name has to carry all the mnemonic elements of a great, cost-effective and reliable service, as well as tune people in to the very nature of this service. It’s this lack of understanding of the importance of naming that contains within it a miasma of issues that can make the ensuing task so difficult. In a climate of budgetary eclipse, I find myself having to address it more and more. At Ideal, we work with our own direct clients on naming projects. We also help other creative communications agencies conduct naming projects with their clients. There is a general lack of understanding of what it takes to make a naming project successful. The central issue falls out like this: the client thinks it’s a simple activity for a wordsmith; the wordsmith knows, or should know, that there is a way to do it that is more likely to lead to success than any other and communicates this to the client/agency; the client and/or agency often responds that there isn’t the time or budget to do this. So, what happens is that the job goes ahead, under the wrong circumstances and down a more difficult path, building in all the problems at the start and greatly reducing the chances of success in the end. Whatever the circumstances, the big thing ought to be to get the client to understand and accept what success is or might be in a naming process. For example, the outcome of a successful naming process could be the decision to stick with the original name of the organisation/ project/service. That is, not to change the name at all. Specifically because the client has been through a process of understanding all the pros and cons. For a new organisation, project or service, however, a successful outcome depends on understanding what is possible in this context – which means there is a lot of preparatory work to do. The upshot of the kind of naming issues I have described, however, is that the eventual and inevitable stalemate is often blamed on the obstinacy or even lack of insight of the wordsmith. Now, nobody wants to let a client down. In our case, we don’t want to let two clients down – the communications agency and their client. But, if we work in a world in which the ill-informed and under-budgeted client is always right, the prickly issue of naming shows us that it’s better to let a client down in the beginning than at the end. So, from now on, the first and most important question we’ll be putting to anyone who wants Ideal to find a new name for anything will be: ‘Are you prepared to do what it takes to make the naming process successful?’ I expect it to be the beginning of a conversation that could very quickly go one of two ways. At Ideal, however, I know we’ll only be going down the route most likely to lead to success.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Austerlitz

My friend and ex-colleague at Interbrand, John Simmons, contacted me on Friday. We’ve made plans to meet up in London following a workshop I’m running for the Media Trust next week. Although we were a close writing team for five years earlier this century, we haven’t seen each other for some time. We do have intermittent email conversations, in which Shakespeare regularly features. The latest has been about blogging. Both of us have come rather late to this world whose extremes seem to be advertising your latest product and telling people what you’ve had for tea. I enjoy Twitter and my time spent with you right here. John is bemused by Twitter and has begun to stretch his writing muscles in the blog on this new website www.26fruits.co.uk/blog/. We’re both aware that people are fascinated by writers, even those who do not read books or rarely put pen to paper or tap the keys. For us, there’s the choice of demystifying or occluding the activity. We both lean towards the former, while recognising the glamour of the latter. For we’re both writers for business (but then, wasn’t Shakespeare?). For me, writing is not my life - although it is tightly bound up with self-expression, which is. As a writer for business, I recognise that writing is not nearly as important or woven into the lives of the people I work with as it is in my own. Yet, it is my task to build a greater connection between people and language. This can and should lead to a meeting of minds. And curiosity – the questions people struggle to ask, often without uttering a word. How do you end up being a writer, crafting crystalline elements of brand strategy, producing books, helping other people to write better? What was your journey? How did you get here? The answers we provide are in our blogs, both in and between the lines. Blogging is revelatory, or it is nothing but noise. Everyone or everything I name here is meaningful in my life in the past, present or future (you know how I feel about time - it’s all grist to the millenarianism which hasn’t quite left me). So, today, for example, I find that the recently crowned world snooker champion, John Higgins, is 34 - the same age as David Beckham. Kissing the pink every day is obviously a stressful life. Toyah Wilcox is 51, which never seemed likely when Derek Jarman‘s film, Jubilee, emerged in 1977. OK, Rick Wakeman is 60 today, so Yes…Wreckless Eric is a magisterial 55, despite living up to his name in an exploration of the whole wide world these last thirty years. And I’m dubious about mentioning that Nobby Stiles turns 67, because I never intended to talk about his profession in this blog (my one taboo). No, today is ultimately significant in the course I’ve taken to become who I am because it would have been W G Sebald’s 65th birthday, had not this most modern and exquisite of writers expired in a car crash in 2001. So, my gift to you today, because I know you won’t have read it, is Sebald’s last novel, Austerlitz. John would understand.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Everything that happens will happen today

So many millions of people are unaware of the significance of Brian Peter George St.John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno in their daily lives. The Microsoft Sound – the six-second start-up music of the Windows 95 operating system. Bloom – the generative music application for iPhone and iPodTouch, that plays a low drone in different tones and creates its own music. His appearance as Father Brian Eno in the very last episode of Father Ted. Some will have heard his music featured in the film adaptation of the best seller from Irvine Welsh, Ecstasy: Three Tales Of Chemical Romance. Others will know his music from the video game, Spore, in which a single player develops a species from scratch until it’s an intelligent being that explores the universe. But I feel I know Brian Eno very well without any of these interventions. He’s been part of my life since I fell in love with Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama, the first two singles from Roxy Music in 1972/3. Since which time his influence on the development of popular music and its future beyond his own lifespan has been second to none. It’s not enough to say there’d be no Aphex Twin or Röyksopp without Eno’s Apollo – Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Without Eno, David Bowie would have become Krusty the Clown, wasting away in a Las Vegas casino. Instead of which we got Low, Heroes and Lodger. OK, I never quite understood Eno’s close association with people as earthbound as U2. Though, true, he did produce their best album, Joshua Tree. I’m obviously missing something about his connection with Coldplay and Icehouse, whose frigid names are so apt. And there was nothing Eno could do to plug Devo into the mainstream consciousness – one progressive regressive idea too far! But, as founder of the concept of ambient music, Eno is the architect of mood control through music, a visitor to our world from the 22nd century. As you’re coming to understand, I’m fascinated by temporal serendipity. Coincidence is my cup of tea and the biscuits I dunk are studded with dates. So, I’m quite intrigued that three, often collaborative, musical giants of my memory banks, have birthdays following one another in close succession. Yesterday, it was Byrne, today it’s Eno, tomorrow it’s Fripp. Sometimes, with genius of this nature, the titles of their works are far better than their content. So, we have the fabulously monikered Everything That Happens Will Happen Today as the latest collaboration between Eno and Byrne in 2008. The names of most of Eno’s work suggest he knows something we don’t but should. In 1977, there was Before And After Science. Eno claimed that this was an anagram of the original title, Arcane Benefits Of Creed. This sounded then like one of his oblique strategies and still does. In 2005, there was Another Day On Earth. Who else could get away with the song, Bone Bomb, released just three weeks before 7/7? Check it out. The following year, he joined 100 major artists and writers in signing an open letter calling for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions. Despite the immense success and influence of his musical springboard, Eno is refreshingly ambivalent about the direction his life has taken. "As a result of going into a subway station and meeting saxophonist Andy Mackay, I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I'd walked ten yards farther, on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now.” In 1972, when you appeared on our planet, you seemed like a glam Davros, an ancient with minutes left to live. As time has moved forward, you have grown younger, sleeker, shinier, more attractive, just like Benjamin Button. Happy 61st birthday, Brian Eno. It will soon be time for school.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

No to negative politicians

One of the first jobs I applied for on graduating was as political researcher to the Labour MEP for West Yorkshire’s Bradford and surrounding region. I didn’t get the job. I didn’t even get an interview, despite graduating in politics from the city’s university with a 2.1 (quite something in those days). Perhaps he intuited that I had voted Conservative in the recent 1979 General Election and was personally responsible for the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in our midst. Instead, I signed up for chartered accountancy, underwent a very bad 80s, unlike the party I elected. And the rest is mystory. One in which I have voted for all three major political parties and one or two smaller ones. You may have noticed it’s local election time again. Shirstleeved candidates are knocking on our doors and dropping unspeakably bad leaflets through our letterboxes. My friend, Craig Dearden-Phillips, is on the stump himself, campaigning to break the Tory stranglehold of a local council seat in Norfolk on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Chief Executive of the advocacy charity for people with learning disabilities, Speaking Up, Craig is examining his future lifelines as he approaches the tremendous age of 40 this summer. A couple of weeks back he asked me for some advice on the messages in his campaigning ‘literature’. Already an accomplished author, with a book and regular national newspaper columns to his name, Craig needn’t have worried. But others should. As I write, I’m staring with incredulity at the A4 folded leaflet from the UKIP party. In a bright dayglo pink and yellow combination (first pioneered by The Sex Pistols in 1977), I am invited to ‘Say No to the EU’. And the visual they use on their front cover is none other than Winston Churchill flicking one of his famous ‘V for Victory’ signs. Now, Churchill died in 1965, some 44 years ago, 8 years before the UK even entered the EU. The photo in question clearly dates from the last days of the Second World War. So, I question the wisdom, never mind the legality, of using the image of a politician totally unconnected to the party and its current proposition. The ongoing expenses scandal makes people wonder about the motivations of politicians, who jostle to expiate their sins by humiliating themselves in more and more irrational ways by the day. But, as far as most politicians are concerned, my wonder has always been around this point: what on earth is it about them that they think they have something to offer people in the first place? And there’s the rub. In politics, as in journalism and all the more venal professions, you just can’t get the staff these days. So, the ghosts of our distant past come to remind us how great we once were, in wartime, on rations. In the meantime, if Europe didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it. So, sorry UKIP, people have had enough of the negative message in politics. I’m following Obama when it comes to political inspiration. ‘Yes, we can!’

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

How they brought the good news from Ghent...

I talk a lot about people as brands. In my time I’ve done some branding work with towns and cities as brands. Or even their surrounding regions. Plymouth. Dublin. North West England. In Stratford upon Avon, I live in a town that’s dominated by an aged mindset and is badly in need of a better reputation. As is not-too-distant Birmingham, the UK’s second (from last) city. Taking things wider still, raised in the Midlands as I was, I am only too aware of the poor standing of the entire region. What is the Midlands but the North/South divide? So, I know how hard it is to make a geographical anomaly stand out. Which is why it’s great to see the Belgian city of Ghent getting a good part of the glory across webworld today. Ghent is going to be the first city in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week. All based on a recognition of the impact of livestock on our environment. I admire this stance. If you’re going to go vegetarian, stand on the biggest platform. While this country is mired in the usual petty-minded politics of expense claims and pot-kettle-black journalism, those we often look down upon are dealing with more significant issues (personally, I’ve never understood why Belgium gets such a bad press from the UK – I’ve always enjoyed my time in Brussels, Bruges and Liege.) In this country the move would be called PC, a basket used by all lazy-minded conservatives with a small or large C. Debbie and I are peskies (pescetarians, or fish eaters). There are many arguments which tell us we should revert to being vegetarians. We need to be sure of the provenance of the fish we eat, whether it is farmed or wild, how it is caught, treated, killed. But, in pointing out the big problem with meat, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Ghent and their galloping good news. Just how many 21st century years is it going to take before the rest of the so-called civilised world acts on the realisation that meat-eating is just a throwback to our Neanderthal roots?

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

He ain't fat, but he ain't thin

My long-lost friend, Martin, is 50 today. Well done, Martin, you made it. And, as with most things, except fatherhood, you made it before me (including getting married – you still haven’t paid me yet for that bet I won!). For those of you who don’t know Martin, he runs a business from Cork, Ireland which operates both here and there. The aim of Smart Tactics is to help business leaders within large companies who are united by one desire - they want more from their business. And he responds to some of these blogs with incisive insight and not a little insider knowledge. Martin and I grew up 17 Staffordshire miles from one another without meeting until we were 18, at Bradford University, on Thursday 6th October, 1977, introduced by one Daska Barnett, optometry student, now pursuing a career as an optician in Hammersmith, London. Unknowingly, we’d even attended one rock concert at Birmingham Odeon a year earlier, on 27 October, 1976. Not uncommon. But when I was waiting in the dental surgery yesterday, I heard that song by Peter Frampton that recalled the gig – Show Me The Way. I still have that concert ticket on my toilet wall. Alongside the tickets from the three consecutive nights Martin and I saw David Bowie play the cow shed of Stafford Bingley Hall on 24/25/26 June, 1978. He liked The Stooges and Marvin Gaye. I liked The Ramones and David Sylvian. We both shared an absolute love of reggae and dub. But we never had cocaine running around our brain. I had a yen for dates. He had a head for figs. Strange fruits. We were different. We were similar. Look where we both ended up – working with and advising businesses on how best to promote themselves. Those late night conversations in Room C26 of Revis Barber Hall, surrounded by the paraphernalia of punk and other new friends new to it all, were where it all started. We’ve been talking about the mechanics and messaging of brands for over 30 years. On this day 30 years ago, Martin’s 20th, we saw Iggy Pop live at Leeds University together. Now, I haven’t seen or even talked to Martin since Sunday, 12th March, 2000. But he’s often been in my thoughts. He’s tried phoning – but I have to say that, when you’re wearing the suit of armour I am, it’s very difficult to pick up a telephone receiver. He’s invited me to Cork, but that would be taking the Michael O’Leary. My long-lost friend, Dean (another exile – and the first person I met at Bradford University, on top of a wall we were both scaling), writes from France to describe Martin in the following electrically engineered words: intelligent, unsure, live, persistent, changing, family, contradictory, ‘contestateur’. Back in our careworn London days, some of us had a little rhyme which called Martin to mind: Martin Finn, he’s a grin, he ain’t fat, but he ain’t thin. And, I reckon that’s still probably the case. Me, I’m struggling to find the exact words to describe Martin. I know he shares a birthday with everyone from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Tony Hancock, Alan Ball to Ian Dury. And let’s not forget Burt Bacharach, with whom he probably wouldn’t mind linking up with. And I have a strange feeling that we’ll actually get around to having our first conversation in the best part of a decade in the week beginning 8th June 2009. Until then, Happy 50th, Martin!

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

All that glitters...

Is it really my duty to announce to the world that today, May 8th 2009, Gary Glitter officially becomes an old age pensioner? I really don’t think so. But, you see, as much as I hated and hate gangs, and despite what we now know, I still love the guy’s music. Through that, he had an influence on the person I am. So, I have no choice but to admit him to the pantheon of artists whose work I admire but whose lives I deplore. (Sorry, I’ll let you know who the others are on this list when I’ve invented it.) In the meantime, Gary, you can’t have your passport, but here’s your bus pass. How else will I mark this day? A quarter of a century ago I was (barely) living in London. I couldn’t afford to travel anywhere due to the expensive public transport policy of Ken Livingstone’s good old GLC. Back in those days, the big money was not spent on Wembley, but on the construction of the Thames Barrier. Officially opened this day 25 years ago, the barrier has been raised well over 100 times against flood possibilities. It cost the current equivalent of £1.5 billion, or two Wembleys. And, unlike Wembley, it works. Now, we just need this kind of approach to be applied to the rest of the island we call home. Houses are still built on flood plains. People whose homes were flooded two years ago are still living in pre-fab huts. But not in London. As the Spring sun glints on the protective and reassuring bastions of the Thames Barrier on its quarter century birthday, much of Western England waits in eternal trepidation for the next flood warnings. While politicians haggle today over a few pennies’ worth of expenses or how many Gurkhas should be allowed to settle in this country, more time and money are lost that could be directed towards averting a regular disaster for so many people outside London. Unfortunately, I'm sounding like the ridiculous UK Independence Party and that unhinged party political broadcast they put out last night. But, while another unnoticed anniversary of significance such as that of the Thames Barrier passes most of us by, new weather patterns are forming. Are we ready? London is. May the sun shine fair this summer.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Pictures on my wall

Today, I’m starting big. What would life be like if women, the least emotional of the genders, had more power to change the way we live our lives? I doubt if we’d have atrocities at weddings in Turkey, or the UK’s ‘least-wanted’ list, newly published today (99% male, naturally). Or people running over police officers in cars. Or nuclear power. Wishful conjecture, I know. But, when you help organisations who work in the sphere of social and environmental change, as I do, it’s hard to avoid the certainty that the issues we are facing in this world are all caused by one sport and death-obsessed gender. Progress is slow. And we all have to get used to the likelihood that, although we can work towards it, we will not see the change we crave in our own lifetimes. When it comes to the human race, I cannot be an optimist. But I will walk stoically on, supporting the efforts of the more reasonable of the genders. Women have been trying to make a difference for centuries, largely by joining this man-made world of unforgiving, hard-line religions and unrelenting, hard-nosed business. 200 years ago today, one Mary Kies became the first US woman to be issued with a patent. In doing so, she broke a pattern whereby women could not own property independently of their husbands in the land of the free. This was a strike for womankind, but just a perpetuation of a system created by men. And so it continues. To generalise big time, in the developed world, women are becoming more like men and less like themselves. And even Margaret Thatcher (the model for this) knew that this was a pretty poor aspiration. Although I doubt she was alluding to this, human rights has to be the highest aspiration of humankind. And so, today, we celebrate the 60th birthday of the Council of Europe, an organisation that most UK citizens will not have heard of, despite having 47 member states and covering over 800 million citizens. An organisation whose best achievement was the European Convention on Human Rights, enforced by the European Court of Human Rights. While studying for my Masters degree in 1990, I was lucky enough to spend six weeks working at the Council in Strasbourg. I think this was the beginning of my own journey. A journey accompanied by lots of music – the crowning achievement of the male gender. Barely a day goes by without me referring to some musical milestone. Today, 5th May 2009, I honour the achievement of Ian McCulloch, founder of Echo and the Bunnymen, who has reached 50. One question still remains unanswered in my head: were Echo and the Bunnymen actually as good as their reputation suggests? On this day in 1977, when Ian McCulloch was celebrating his 18th birthday, he met fellow musical dreamers Julian Cope and Pete Wylie at a Clash gig in Liverpool. Together and apart, these three set the post-punk musical scene in Liverpool. I would argue that the music of Teardrop Explodes and Wah! reached higher pitches of intensity and brilliance than Echo and the Bunnymen, whose first downbeat single, Pictures On My Wall, was released 30 years ago today, too. While I’m marking the moment, I doubt if I’ll be giving it a spin. Today, I’m ending small.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Gordon The Garden Gnome

Everybody knows that the whole point of the month of May is to act as host for the Chelsea Flower Show. Unlikely members of the Royal Horticultural Society, Debbie and I will be making our annual pilgrimage to Chelsea on 19th May. All gardeners are aware that one Alan Titchmarsh has been hosting Chelsea for the BBC for over a quarter of a century. Among the many achievements of this mild-mannered but extremely prolific and ambitious man is the voiceover for Gordon The Garden Gnome on the C-Beebies channel. It’s a moniker that seems to fit this insider of all insiders. Now, I’m one for outsiders, but Alan Titchmarsh has always fascinated me, not least for winning a Bad Sex in Fiction Award. And he gets a namecheck here because it’s his 60th birthday tomorrow. Nobody does bland middle-of-the-road conformity to such perfection as Alan Titchmarsh. Barely a year goes by without him getting an award for it. Yet he’s been at the centre of the love of all things green and growing that Debbie and I have developed as our passion in common over these last fifteen years. Gardening. My Damascene conversion. My third university. My relief, release and antidote. My ephemeral and eternal delight. My perennial ‘this must be it, longed-for bliss’ moment. As I look up from my computer onto our 80-metre garden of green evanescence, there is something important about life that I just know.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk