by Nick Molloy
During my first year at university the number of people who had applied to do marketing was only just in double figures. By the time I graduated, the number of graduates was in treble figures ! A huge number of students had swapped from their originally intended courses to sit a marketing degree. Why ? Because, it was easier than their originally intended degree. They were literally giving marketing degrees away. Any monkey who could copy out of a book could have got one. However, as usual my view was not popular. There were less than ten of us on the course that expressed such a view. The rest revelled in the fact that they had time to party all the way to graduation without having to do any hard work or put much thought into it.
I didn’t want to attend my graduation day. I considered it an indictment of our university system, an authority spewing forth an effluent of undeserved, worthless degrees. I attended only for my parents, mainly my dad. It was a rare moment where he was able to show that he was proud of me. I had achieved something he had wanted to do himself, but, due to circumstances he had been unable to achieve it. I guess it was an archetypal example of the parent finally fulfilling an unachieved ambition through the offspring.
The Scottish degree system enabled me to continue taking history courses until my very final semester. They became my anti-dote to the marketing classes - intellectual thought with detailed probing and investigation. I actually looked forward to the four hour tutorials ! I continued to get top marks in the history courses and enjoyed them far more than my ‘chosen’ subject. In my final year I was offered the opportunity to pursue a PhD in history. However, Doctor Sexecute never really appealed to me. I have never fancied the life of an academic and anyway, I wanted to earn some money and have some financial independence. Living another three years close to the breadline just so I could call myself doctor, was not at all desirable. Furthermore, even if I were a doctor by qualification, I would never actually want to be referred to as such. I have never believed in titles (primarily because they are inherited). Even those titles that are earned seem pretentious in their usage.
My final year’s dissertation had been on the Marketing of Professional football and on the back of it, I decided to try and get into that line of work. My advertising dream hadn’t quite worked out. I discovered that creatives come in pairs (copywriter and artist). They were also meant to work for free for a while to prove themselves ! I got down to the final 50 at Saatchi and Saatchi (from over 2000) and on a final shortlist at JWT for the positions of Account Executive and Media Buyer respectively. However, I had never coveted either position particularly. My lack of enthusiasm probably showed. Also, it appeared to be an incestuous business. A large proportion of people I met at the interviews had relatives in the industry and the interviewers kept asking which family members worked in advertising. It all made me feel a little uneasy.
My dissertation probably went far beyond what was actually required for a bachelor degree. Questionnaires were sent out to over 150 football clubs here and abroad. On a limited budget I visited the commercial managers at five professional clubs (starting in London and making my way north). I spoke to several more on the phone. A couple of professional clubs even bought my dissertation off me upon completion (including Olympiakos in Greece). I still had sporting ambitions and one day I would make my living from training my body……
===============
I had just gone completely arise over tit on stage in front of dozens of people. There was some spilt drink on the floor and this had proved my undoing. The pain from my ankle, where I had gone over was excruciating and I could feel the blood in my dick rapidly draining out to other parts of my body. What an interesting week this was turning out to be.
On the Sunday I had performed the longest strip I had ever done. The gentleman concerned had opted for something different at his private party. He didn’t want a strip show as such, more of a stealthily stripping waiter. I served drinks and chatted to his guests. Every 30 minutes or so I removed a garment until I was serving in nothing more than a stars and stripes g-string (he was American). It was a very well to do affair and one inebriated, posh older lady nearly fell over and injured herself upon seeing me in the g string. I have become friendly with the booker since then, so I classify it as another day of enrichment.
A couple of days later I made my way Northwards to begin another tour of the Northern gay venues. I generally did a different venue each night for about a week. During that time I would hopefully bag a peak or two in the lake district and visit some friends; both old and new.
The cultural difference between the Northern and Southern clubs was always quite striking. The Northern audiences tended to be more amiable, whereas the staff in the clubs were often less so. Having just driven nearly 200 miles to get there, one would be lucky if you were offered a drink and the changing areas were typically appalling. On my visit to Bar NY in Doncaster I was changing in what looked like a doss-house toilet. It had a room attached to it, but I was instructed that the strippers ‘weren’t allowed in there’.
The act went well and I went downstairs for my customary drink of water afterwards. I chatted to various people for about an hour and went upstairs to retrieve my gear. I found the slightly inebriated manager of the said venue on his hands and knees over my kit bag. He had been rummaging through its contents and had found my g-string. I caught him sniffing the g-string quite merrily. He seemed quite embarrassed and I didn’t know what to say. I guess in a weird kind of way it was a backhanded compliment, so I just said ‘thanks for your interest’, packed it away again and was on my way.
Anyway, I was flat out on my back in Downtown, a club in Wakefield. It was one of he grottiest, dirtiest places imaginable. If you were unlucky the changing area was a step between the kitchen and the back bar. If you were lucky the back bar was closed. I knew it must have looked bad by the horrified look on the bouncer’s face and the way she (yes she) was mouthing ‘are you alright’ at me in my prone position.
I grimaced and nodded at the same time, fighting to my feet. I couldn’t put any weight through the ankle and had to lean heavily onto my good leg. I somehow limped through the remaining half of the act. The pain must have been quite bad because it had overcome the effect of the elastic bands and my dick had reverted back to its normal flaccid size. When I limped back out later, all I could hear was ‘he didn’t have a very big one’. Nobody said ‘didn’t he do well considering he couldn’t actually walk’.
I left Downtown feeling more than a little disgruntled and hopped back to my car. The feedback from the accelerator and the resultant pain was too much for my damaged ankle (the right one). I had to drive from Wakefield to Sheffield using my left foot exclusively. It was just as well it was late at night with little traffic and that I encountered no police cars. My progress was a little erratic.
The next morning I couldn’t stand on the ankle at all, let alone walk. The application of ice to the ankle was like the application of electrodes to the testicles (shocking). I was certain I had broken it again. The symptoms were identical to when I had done it before.
I was staying with Dave and John, the agents who arranged the tour. They have always been extremely gracious hosts and Dave drove me to the hospital to get an x ray. Initially, it was diagnosed as a break because of the shadow on the bone in the x ray. I was sent away in plaster and told to come back the next day. When I returned the plaster was ripped off, but I was told to keep the crutches. A specialist had studied the x ray. The shadow on the bone was due to the previous break. I had merely torn all the ligaments in the ankle. I should be mobile again within a few weeks I was told.
I actually returned to the stage little more than a week later with a bit of a limp. However, it made me realize how frail and unstable my new income was. Hurriedly, I joined Equity the performers union. As part of the joining fee they included insurance. If I was to break my leg or worse, then maybe I could at least have some money coming in during my convalescence.
===============
At university I had rekindled my interest in sport. My long term knee problem had finally righted itself after years of torment. The standard prescription for my ailment was to put both legs in plaster to help precipitate an early cure. However, the doctors I visited seemed disinterested, for some reason, in referring me for such treatment. They preferred nature to take its course. A broken ankle acquired playing chess (I know it sounds ridiculous) when I was 14 meant that one leg was in plaster for several weeks. Needless to say it seemed to cure the knee problem in the right leg. I’m sure the left knee would have healed similarly if this simple course of action had been taken. Instead, I suffered with the pain for years.
I began gingerly by visiting the cinder track at the university, which was usually in a state of flood for 300 of the 400 meters of surface. On only my third visit, I was clocked at 11.9 for the 100m. I was particularly encouraged as only the year before, there had been a one off competition whereby every club in the football league had entered their fastest player into a 100m sprint challenge. Only 3 out of the 92 entrants succeeded in going under 12 seconds.
I joined the university track team and found I had only one rival in the sprints (the standard was hardly high). Although, I didn’t take sport terribly seriously at university (there was a complete lack of facilities or encouragement in individual events), it was a decent re-introduction for me. I acquired a decent training partner in my Spanish friend, Roberto, and we engaged in various weight training and sprint programmes together. We made our own way to some inter-university track meets and also took part in the Scottish Bench Press championships (I came second in my weight class).
My rediscovery of sport and my incorrect assertions about advertising had taken me in a new direction with a view to the working world. On the back of my dissertation, I decided I would attempt to find work in the world of sport on the commercial side. I approached countless numbers of football clubs and alleged sports marketing agencies. Unfortunately for me, timing is everything and I didn’t have it. I had an amazing ‘interview’ at Leeds United whereby the interviewer clearly knew nothing about the emerging commercial nature of football and the use of club images as brands. I mentioned something about the young supporters being the future consumers and he said they should be at home in bed not watching football ! Needless to say I wouldn’t be working there. Manchester City invited me to a game and a meeting with their commercial manager to tell me about the chicken and the egg. As I had no formal sales experience he couldn’t offer me a position, but how does one get experience without being offered a position ? He recommended that I come back in a year with some experience. I suggested that he might not be able to afford me then as I might be earning a lot more than the £15,000 per annum he was talking about. He said that was a chance he would have to take. I did phone him after a year but asked him to match the £40,000 I was then earning. Needless to say he choked.
Alan Pascoe Associates (then a sports marketing company run by the former track athlete with many connections in UK athletics) offered me a job on the proviso that I begin work for free. I politely asked what I was meant to eat and where was I meant to live in the interim period before they began to pay me for my services. I was met with the answer that several other people were willing to work for free to break into sport. It was a similar story at TWI. I told both of them that I wasn’t a registered charity, nor a robot. I starve if you don’t feed me and I need money to buy food. Needless to say, that was not particularly well received. That was when I first started to realize that the best positions in firms seem to be acquired by the well-to-do. They after all, have the contacts and the rich parentage to see them through the early years when the remuneration is insufficient to live on. The rest of us just get regular jobs.
I began applying for those regular jobs. These were the jobs I simply had no interest in or passion for, but, I needed money to buy my independence and to begin having my own life. Three interviews on and I was offered a job working for an IT contract recruitment firm in central London. I would receive a £13,000 basic + commission. The same day they made their offer I had an interview with another recruitment consultant interviewing for his client in St Albans. I’ll never forget the meeting. I explained to him that I was going to take the offer I had on the table unless he could offer me something better. He explained he wasn’t in a position to do that but suggested we have a chat anyway. We did, which became very informal and at the end of the hour we thanked each other for being candid and taking the time. He wished me luck with the other position and said something very prophetic “I think you’ll go one of two ways Nick – either you will be incredibly successful at what you choose to do, or, you will reject the whole thing and go and live in a field in the middle of nowhere”. Interestingly, he didn’t raise the possibility of both scenarios occurring………….
===============
I was just starting to prepare myself to go on stage. It was a Thursday night and I was at a gay venue I play regularly in Kings Cross. Central Station is now one of my favourites because there is always something weird and wonderful going on in the basement. To the uninitiated however, it could be deeply intimidating.
Mark, the manager, appeared in my upstairs landing changing area and spoke in his soft dulcet Irish tone, ‘Nick, there’s going to be a slight delay. We have a had a problem with the dogs, they’ve been fighting’
I knew there was a small bull terrier type dog that lived somewhere on the premises, but, I had never seen the plural version.
‘I thought you only had one dog ?’ I asked curiously.
‘Not the canine version, I mean the human dogs in the basement. They are all now licking their wounds’
The Dog Pound as Mark duly informed me, was a regular event at Central Station. The clientele was split into owners and dogs. The owners would literally walk the dogs on leads and the dogs would bark, growl and do as their owners told them….mostly. On this particular night a fight had broken out between the dogs (on all fours) and some dogs had been bitten. The delay was so that their wounds could be tended to.
The Dog Pound was not the only unusual club night that had taken place at Central Station, as Mark was all too willing to divulge. The baby club involved numerous grown adult men who would come and dress in nappies and pretend to be helpless babies. ‘Mothers’ would tend to the babies often scolding them for soiling their nappies. On other nights there was naked oil wrestling. Spurt was a wanking club and weirdest of all was the night that Mark recoiled with horror, when plastic sheeting had to be put down to contain all the bodily ablutions. I certainly didn’t envy him in the clean up operation.
Personally, up close, I have seen the CP (Corporal Punishment) club, the buff club and the filming of a lesbian porn film – all within the walls of Central Station. In fact male strip shows are a relatively tame and civilized affair in that particular part of Kings Cross.
With its tolerant and liberal attitude to life, it remains one of my favourite venues on the circuit and I have met and made many friends within its walls. Long may it live and prosper.
===============
I took the job at Passive Resources. The bank graciously lent me £3000 so that I could buy some suits, hand over the required two months deposit to rent a flat and survive the first month until I got paid. I asked my boss to be where he lived and he replied Croydon. Not knowing the London area at all, I decided that would be a decent a place as any to live and rented a less than salubrious flat near East Croydon station. The owner of the flat I wanted wouldn’t accept me as a tenant, presumably because I was too young. There were very few properties within my price range, so I was left with the one bedroom flat that had no central heating and mold growing on the walls.
I won’t ever forget my first week at work. It was an incredible period of ups and downs. I had been unable to secure the flat until the end of my first week and Passive were keen for me to start. They put me up in a hotel for the first week just off Tottenham Court Road.
I boarded a train, on a Sunday evening bound for Hemel Hempstead where I would spend my first day on a company introduction course. That train journey was where I read for the first time Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by DS Bach. It is a short story about a seagull who simply didn’t fit in with his flock. He was always striving for more, but was continually told that his behaviour wasn’t normal or befitting a seagull. Eventually he became a total outcast but found his own way to achieve what he wanted from life. I found it to be an incredibly moving tale, probably because I related to it through many parts of my own life. Also, I guess it was a period where I was feeling incredibly alone and vulnerable again. I didn’t want to be doing the job I was about to take, nor was I relishing the countless hours of struggle or debt. Still, it had to be done to progress.