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/

Did yer like that?

In my Mr Memory Man vision bank: a flat-capped, forty-something bloke running for all his might from the path of a falling industrial chimney, honking a clown’s horn on the end of a rope around his neck, shouting, ‘Bloody hell, it’s goin’, it’s goin!’ And narrowly getting away with his life once again. Then, when the dust has settled, grinning ‘That were good, wan’it? Did yer like that?’ Bolton’s Fred Dibnah was born middle-aged. One of those blokes who was never young. At the time Fred first began appearing on TV, I’d still have been a student at Bradford University, in a city still mourning the loss of its proud Victorian industrial power. Many a dark, drunken night we walked home past abandoned, brokendown factory hulks housing the ghosts of fob-watched philanthropists, looking down from orange-lit warehouses shrouded by coughing chimneys. All tombstone-quiet by then, just waiting for the handy work of Fred Dibnah, chimney feller fellah. He never set out in life to knock down disused chimneys. It’s just how he ended up, TV-famous, like, you know. On April 28th 1938, the day Fred was actually born, King Zog of Albania married Countess Geraldine of Hungary. Fred’s was a different world. One that had disappeared before he was born (and he knew it). A world of steam, machine tools, crankshafts, mill wheels and a windswept, working–class, sepia-tinted philosophy of a lost golden industrial age honed atop many a redundant factory chimney. A white world of empire where everyone knew their place. Well, Fred fell from his chimney of life back in 2004. He’d have been 71 today. Strangely, although I was never part of his world, he is very much part of mine.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk