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job.
    I’m not sure that in the correct order of things I would have chosen Oliver as a best buddy—he was a little bit brash for me and didn’t always treat everyone as an equal; but he had many other qualities that more than made up for the, well, the deficiencies. Oliver was generous to a fault, had great charm and wit, frequently produced wonderful copy and ideas, and was unselfish with the latter; he also had great energy. With his handsome face, light-brown eyes and full reddish-brown hair that curled around his ears and over his brow, he was also a female magnet, much like that old Jeep, which often meant that I could leave him to the chat-lines while I played the quiet interesting one. Occasionally we’d switch and I’d take on the gregarious role, but Oliver could never stay quiet and interesting for long; his natural boisterousness—and vanity—would eventually take over. He was no good playing stooge. Didn’t matter though, we were a great team both professionally and socially.
    We had good times together and through our teamwork we produced some memorable campaigns for accounts as diverse as banking and hair products, alcohol and automobiles. Our reputation grew, as did our salaries, and soon we were being headhunted by other reputable agencies.
    We only moved twice though, once to J. Walter Thompson, then to Saatchi & Saatchi, as it was then called. After that, with quite a bit of soul-searching, some sleepless nights and earnest debates (with Oliver as the prime mover in this new and risky plan), we took the plunge and started up our own outfit.
    We were lucky. The economy was healthy, house prices were booming, and a lot of money was coming in from abroad. Bank managers (as they still were at the time) were not quite throwing money at businessmen who wanted to expand or start up new companies but, encouraged by their own banking grandees, were generous towards new ventures that had legs. Oliver and I gave a polished presentation to our friendly city bank manager, as if we were pitching for a new account, with my copywriter doing most of the talking while I showed some of our better award-winning work (yep, we were that good) and the manager bought it all.
    We approached an excellent account director we knew from another agency and poached a good fresh junior copywriter and art director from Saatchi’s. Oliver had a girlfriend at that time (foolishly, I’d introduced her to him at the old agency) who was a rep for a high-blown and high-priced photographer whose food and product stills were as good as his people work. She was a clever, beautiful brunette, fashionable, and keen with big brown eyes and a slim, leggy body most women would die for and most men would kill for. Her name was Andrea Dodds and eventually I married her. But now’s not the time to go into that. We hired Andrea to be our office manager and second to Sydney Presswell, our financial manager and third partner, who looked alter the business side of things (he was the account director we picked up from another agency). She was presentable, good at handling clients (I used to be one of her clients), and stood no bullshit. Did I say she was beautiful? Well, she was—and still is.
    We took on just one secretary, Lynda, to begin with, who also acted as receptionist and telephone operator; a run-around junior, a young kid named Raymond who aspired to be an art director, but who’d had no art school training; a typographer called Peter and the young creative team I mentioned, Paul and Mark. Finding the right premises wasn’t that easy, but after a lot of searching and a lot of rejections, we stumbled upon premises with two vacant floors slap in the middle of Covent Garden. It had just come on the market and it was pricey—actually, too pricey for us—but we knew instantly it was exactly what we were looking for.
    We set about the hardest part of the whole venture: acquiring clients. Legally we had contracts with our ex-employers which