Not a great deal to report this week, or at least nothing too different to last week.
Work was a never ending stream of problems, emergencies and issues sprinkled in between a million meetings and a Friday trip to London. That was fun.
However on the train back from London I received a message from my friend Paul who I have known since I was 18. It contained a video that I thought had long since been lost to landfill as when it was recorded, the internet and the cloud did not exist. The VHS tape on which it existed was as far as I knew now no longer in existence.
It seems not. Somehow Paul had come across it and it has been uploaded to the internet where it can now live forever. Whether it should or not.
Way back in the late 80s and early 90s I was in several bands with Paul. We were hoping for pop stardom and for a few years we gigged a lot locally, gaining a decent local following and even got onto local radio at one point.
Of course, just like our hairlines those dreams went away but we all carried on getting enjoyment from music and we stay in touch from time to time.
As toe curlingly embarrassing as this video is, it genuinely made my day. It was so lovely to see something that only existed before the internet as so much of what we did in these bands is now lost.
Anyway, here is a video we shot in Paul’s dining room to send off to some TV competition for unsigned bands. The song is called New Foundation which you would quickly realise if you can make it beyond the early parts of the video where we do a terrible job of trying to do some kind of cool band intro.
The hair, fresh faces and fun we had reflected how much we all enjoyed being in bands with people you genuinely like and get on with. That is still the case today. For anyone that showed any interest in the book I did a while back, my experiences in bands at this time formed much of the “research” done for it. Write about what you know and all that.
It’s been a right old week. As much as it is nice (and welcome) to be popular, this multiple job thing is a toughie.
So I’m working really hard at trying to look busy at the old place, smiling at all the right things, feigning the appropriate level of concern at others, and above all else trying to keep up the thin charade that I really give a rat’s ass. On top of that, I’ve been to see my new place a couple of times, and despite not getting paid by them for some weeks, I’ve picked some work from there, which is hampered mainly by the fact that I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing in new world yet.
Add to all of that a week of second and third interviews, and ridiculous psychometric tests at my other “opportunity”, and all the brain power needed to think about which job I’d take where I to get both, I’ve certainly had less stressful weeks. With me, stress does not deliver handy side benefits like not eating so that I emerge some weeks later with the body of Russell Brand. No, stress for me represents itself in the form of binge eating and acne!! Yes, acne!! So despite turning up for these interviews looking like some plague ridden fatty, somehow I managed to get myself a second job offer.
That really put the cat amongst the pigeons. However, after due consideration, I stuck with my original offer, and politely turned the second one down. Financially both were similar, but the second one, frankly, sounded really hard, and so, like the big girl’s blouse that I am, I opted for what appears to be the path of least resistance.
You’d think having two offers was more than enough for anyone in these tough times, and believe me I have no clue how this has happened. For many weeks prior to this employers were literally making a point of not urinating on me despite being metaphorically on fire. Then, of course, to continue the overuse of metaphors, three come along at once.
What’s that? Three you say? Well nearly. I have one last iron in the fire which won’t come to fruition for a couple of weeks, and this one truly is a game changer in many ways, not least salary wise, but also in lots of other ways which I won’t bore anyone with until (and if) it becomes relevant. I suspect it won’t!
This hectic week was rounded off back in the office on Friday, where the normally fairly quiet and peaceful vistas of Salford Quays were overrun with badly dressed disillusioned Jeremy Kylers, as Ant ‘n’ Dec had brought the Britain’s Got Talent juggernaut to my offices. I work in a seven storey building right opposite the Lowry Theatre, and in reception is a “function room” which had for the day been converted into a holding pen for the intellectually challenged folks trying to get Cowell’s attention by passing coat hangers through their nasal cavity or similar. After being kept waiting in this corporate wasteland for several hours they were then escorted across the plaza into the theatre itself to perform.
BGT Q
As much as this made any lunch time outings an assault course, it did mean that the three-hour sales meeting in the morning had a welcome distraction, as I could giggle at the seemingly endless hordes of no hopers willing to stand in the absolutely persistent rain that did not let up for one second.
This made the meeting go quite quickly if I’m honest. I will admit that me taking photos out of the window may have given the game away that I wasn’t giving the subject at hand all my attention, but hey, what are they gonna do, sack me?
At lunch time I did venture out, and the entire area was like a cross between some scene from The Lord of The Rings and a Jerry Springer marathon. Some “acts” had animals with them, some family were pushing some huge “thing” up the side of the theatre, with two young kids, obviously wearing some spangly affair under the coats. Lord knows what they would be doing. Hopefully it was some sort of Weapon of Mass Destruction to be unleashed on Cowell whenever he deigned to appear later into the day.
The first seven or eight hours seems to be run by hundreds of “Crew” who had an average age of around fourteen, but all had headsets and earnest expressions as they herded Albert the Spoon Playing Albino Dwarf across the slippery concrete expanse outside the Lowry Theatre. That’s showbiz.
Even as I left (which to be honest, was a little earlier than I should have), it was still ram packed all around, with the surrounding restaurants doing a roaring trade. It will take them days to sweep up all the glitter from those dance troops though.
I will say that the mechanics of it all it very impressive, and how they get a rabble like that into any sort of order to milk hours of TV out of it, I’ll never know. It may be crass, intelligence insulting bilge, but it is well organised crass, intelligence insulting bilge.
I wonder how many of today’s true global superstars can say their careers started off in a drizzly, windy and cold Salford under an umbrella.
BGT Q2
Still, just think, these auditions may uncover a new star, maybe the next Coldplay? I rest my case!!
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