Dave Roberts - Sad Men

Contents

e-luv: an internet romance

The Bromley Boys

32 Programmes

For more information on Dave Roberts and his books, see his website at www.daverobertsbooks.com. And once youve read this one, go to www.sadmen.co.uk as well.

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain
in 2014 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Dave Roberts 2014

Dave Roberts has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448154203
ISBN 9780593071304

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This book is dedicated to Zac & Lila, Hazel & Ian, Billy & Frank, and Saatchi & Saatchi.

By the time I was fourteen, my life was already planned out. I was going to marry the girl in the Flake advert (spoiler alert that didnt happen) and become an award-winning copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi, the worlds finest advertising agency. The pursuit of the second and only marginally less ambitious part of this plan would take me halfway around the world before eventually ending up in America. Not in Madison Avenue and the glamorous, seductive world made famous by Mad Men, but in an average street a hundred miles from New York, in Hartford, Connecticut.

It was there, on a sweltering summers day a few months ago, that I heard my wife Liz (who has never appeared in any chocolate ad) shout, Dave, the mailmans here with your package.

Thats postman and parcel, I mumbled, pushing myself away from the computer where I was writing an ad about frozen prawns, scheduled to appear in the October edition of Sandwich and Snack News. Even though wed been living in her parents attic for a couple of years, I had adapted to living in the US in typical British fashion by not adapting at all.

As I leapt down the stairs, taking several at a time, I felt a mounting sense of excitement. Id been tracking this parcel online for days, charting its progress across the Atlantic. It had been to Heathrow, East Midlands Airport, Cincinnati Sorting Facility, West Hartford Sorting Facility, and now, finally, it was here.

After signing for it with a flourish, I took the box into the kitchen, keen to see how many things on my wish-list Nick, my brother-in-law, had managed to send. The idea was that being surrounded by some of the things I missed most about England would help me get over my homesickness things like Cadburys chocolate which you just cant get in the US, unless you go to places with names like Ye Olde English Shoppe, which I could obviously never do.

I opened the parcel and let out an involuntary shriek of delight when I saw the treasures within. Even Liz looked impressed a long way from the look on her face when she had seen the last piece of mail I got from England and completely failed to grasp (a) the sheer desirability of the 1949 Romford v. Bromley programme, (b) what a small price 24 was to pay for it on eBay, and (c) the fact that I only had thirty-two programmes and badly needed more.

I lifted out a box of Weetabix and instantly felt even more nostalgic for home than usual, sparked by memories of some of the brilliant adverts Id seen over the years. While Liz saw nothing more than a yellow cereal box, in my mind I saw the cartoon bovver boys from the 1980s, starring parrot-voiced Brian. They didnt just want itchy breakfasts, they wanted Weetabix.

And so did I. Tomorrow morning, I would introduce Liz to my favourite first meal of the day: two Weetabix with a generous amount of butter and a layer of Marmite (The growing-up spread you never grow out of) which Nick had thankfully also included. It would be, as they said in later commercials, unbeat-a-bix.

Next out of the box was a Topic bar, which looked much smaller than I remembered, but the jingle asking What has a hazelnut in every bite? was soon running through my head (as was the playground response Squirrel poo!).

A couple of packets of Smiths Crisps (hed thoughtfully put in one for Liz too) brought back images of singing potatoes who, to the tune of Bobbys Girl, insisted that they wanna be Smiths Crisps because if we were, what tasty light and golden crisps wed be. It was almost enough to make me burst open my bag there and then.

But I resisted, as I needed to leave enough room for a slice of cake and a cup of tea. Not just any cake, but an exceedingly good Mr Kipling cake. And not just any tea, either, but PG Tips, forever associated in my mind with the exchange between Shifter and Son, piano movers, which began with the son saying, Dad, do you know the pianos on my foot? Whereupon his father sniffed and wiped his hand under his nose before replying You hum it, son, and Ill play it as he started banging the piano keys.

As I waited for the kettle to boil, I realized that British advertising still had the same hold on me it had always had. My thoughts drifted back to the time when PG Tips put me on a path that would shape my life, where adverts would dictate much of what I did, and the desire to be a part of the world that created them would become an all-encompassing obsession.

I was three years old at the time.

I had just sat down at my MacBook Pro and embarked on a six-hour EastEnders marathon when Liz poked her head round the door.

Dont forget your deadline, she reminded me.

The hand holding a McVities Chocolate Digestive that I was about to dip into my cup of PG Tips hovered in mid-air as I froze. She was right. This was far more important than what was going on in Albert Square. I dipped the biscuit, thankful that I no longer needed to go without wheat and dairy, and paused the on screen action.

I then opened a Word document and got on with what I was meant to be doing writing about prawns. How lucky can one man get?

At Royal Greenland, quality is more important than speed. Thats why we let them grow for five to six years in the icy cold, unpolluted waters of the Arctic. I savoured every word as I typed. Only then do they reach the sort of texture, colour and size which set them apart.

I sat back, satisfied. This was back to doing what I loved most, writing ads. When I was doing this, it was easy to forget that we were living with Lizs parents in a blue-collar part of Hartford in Connecticut, just until we got on our feet again, after having to leave New Zealand when the money ran out.

As I tried to come up with a killer final line, I thought about how our luck had started to change with that out-of-the-blue phone call from Andy, the junior art director from my Manchester days, the one I worked with on Indesit. I asked him what hed been doing since I last saw him and almost immediately wished I hadnt. After BDH, hed done something Id never managed to do worked for Saatchi & Saatchi. Arnold, the Manchester office MD, had given him a job and he spent several years there doing ads for Cold Shield windows and Moben Kitchens until the agency managed to lose both accounts in quick succession, and Andy was left wondering what to do next.