by Adam Leigh
“Oh, I doubt that, Alice,” Julian retorted with an arrogance that suggested successful social events were exclusively his domain.
“Since we’re a parenting website, my view is that we should be more Harry Potter than Freddie Mercury in theme. At the very least, it has to be during the day and full of kids. You know, Julian, little adults.” We indeed should have thought it through a bit better.
“Sorry,” I ventured cautiously, “but she’s right. We do need kids, cake and jelly. We’ll just have to return the vodka fountain.”
Julian nodded. It was a rare moment of cohesion between us all and we started to refocus our planning efforts. He slapped her on the back, like she was one of the chaps, and declared: “Alice, we’d be lost without your common sense. This is going to have to be a kids’ party that’ll have the little buggers fighting each other to get in. And I mean properly punching and kicking, not just a bit of shoving.”
We decided to make it a Sunday lunchtime. The guest list was what you might describe as charmingly eclectic. Julian and I invited our families and various friends and their kids to make up the numbers. We had a lot of minor celebrities from reality shows whom I did not really recognise. They were lovely to look at but seemed rather out of place, insisting on selfies with toddlers who were oblivious to their fame. The children were in turn intrigued and slightly spooked by their artificial noses and lips, which seemed likely to collapse or melt at any time. There were also journalists and TV presenters with their offspring, mingling awkwardly with a few well-known footballers and sports personalities. Charlie Evans couldn’t come, but we had a couple of the cast of Baby Boomers whom he had gently suggested should attend, unless they wanted to be written out of Series 4.
Sarah came up to me at some stage in the afternoon and whispered, “Oh, look at you, Alex Lazarus, friend to the rich and famous. I hope you’ll remember your kith and kin from the suburbs who were always there for you when you were a bit of a nonentity.”
“Security. Security. I am being hounded by a madwoman. Have her removed.”
“Alex. You may have forgotten us all. But I am very proud.” She squeezed my hand.
‘Sorry, I wasn’t joking. I really am getting security. It’s important I have no emotional ties to drag me down. Sorry, love, but good luck with the doctor thing and say hi to the kids.”
As soon as I said this, I winced at my lack of tact, but as ever Sarah let it pass. She wandered back to my parents, who were looking after the kids. They were gracious, if slightly bemused. My father was socially adept at striking up and maintaining a witty conversation with anyone. Sharquisha, recent winner of Your Day in Court, was proving a bit of a challenge. (You got to be the judge of a matrimonial dispute, with barristers and expert witnesses. My father refused to accept it was legally binding.)
Catherine seemed subdued and sat with friends in the corner nursing a constant glass of wine, vaguely supervising her brood. She and Julian hardly acknowledged each other for the duration of the afternoon. I tried to speak to her, though it was like engaging with a disgruntled teenager attending a granny’s birthday party. Julian did interact with his kids a bit, but I got the sense that they were a useful prop in his arms when he was talking to someone influential, to reinforce his credentials as an all-round top bloke. They were a very photogenic family and the one group shot that Catherine participated in made them all look like catalogue models. My kids cultivated a sort of rustic dishevelled look that had the effect of keeping any photographer at bay.
The key was to have opinion formers and influencers generate lots of interest – individuals with significant fan bases and followers, who commented on parenting and indeed made significant income through the promotion of their knowledge or the cutesiness of their children. We picked the best and most interesting sellers and encouraged them to join in the fun.
There were some fabulously inventive individuals on display. You could design your own jigsaw, make funky socks and learn incredible card tricks. We had singing and dancing teachers and Yoga for Tots (a woman called Dagma, who basically got them to sing ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ repeatedly). Star attraction was the UK champion face painter, a heavily tattooed woman from Coventry who was an artist with both a needle and a make-up brush. We made sure she used the latter.
She worked her magic on one of the footballers, himself no stranger to a bit of ink on his arms. The England midfielder had played away quite a lot recently and his wife was giving him one last chance to improve his home form. He was therefore totally pliant and playing the role of doting parent to the full. His wronged missus seemed to relish briefing his face painting and, after an hour, the artwork was very impressive. It was a magnificent photo opportunity, and to help you imagine the design, I will simply tell you the headline in the Sun the following day:
THREE LIONS ON HIS SHIRT,
BUT SUCH A PRETTY KITTY ON HIS FACE.
We couldn’t have hoped for better coverage, as the photo went global with our branding clearly displayed behind him. The whole afternoon was unquestionably very successful. People had fun and with the exception of the little boy who, unable to find the loo, relieved himself by the shapely ankles of a humourless newsreader, there were few mishaps. Julian and I made a welcome speech, which we had rehearsed carefully. We outlined why we were committed to changing how people parented and talked about our mission and purpose. We even thanked our lovely wives, one of whom was smiling and the other scowling. We finished in a jokey fashion.
Me: “Well, who knows, Julian, what we’d both be doing if we hadn’t started talking in the park that day?”
Julian: “You’d still be in a boring office making bad jokes.”
Me: “And you’d be a boring lawyer always out at lunch.”
Julian: “Thank the Lord we found each other.”
Yes, we were that hilarious.
***
Our opening few months were about stunts and getting coverage. I did a deal with Out There PR, a young agency who spotted in us the chance to make a name for themselves. They agreed to do the first three months for a future bonus in lieu of payment now and, in return, I agreed that we would not veto their ideas if they felt particularly strongly about something.
I knew the two principals, Max and Louise, from when we were all formerly employed at larger agencies and had shared a client. They had bravely given it all up to do their own thing, telling me at the time that their ambition wasn’t necessarily to make a fortune, but to be responsible for the decisions they made for themselves. PR had evolved. It was no longer boozy champagne lunches with journalists in return for column inches. Now you needed to create content and narratives in social media communities, to be disseminated by people you didn’t know. Certainly, the industry didn’t require you to dress as if you were going shopping in Knightsbridge. This was lucky for Max and Louise, who didn’t care about an elegant wardrobe and looked like they were about to do the gardening.
Gathered in The Bored Room, they enthusiastically went through some of their initial ideas, which included a ‘parent of the year’ competition. Max grandly proclaimed:
“We’ve done our research, and there are lots of worthy awards, but not one that is contemporary and would attract a national media partner. We get nominations from all over the country, a few celebrities to help endorse it, and a newspaper or radio station for coverage, which would be easy to do. The key is to use it as a vehicle to tackle the issues of what it takes to be a parent today.”
“It’s not really that original, is it?” I ventured as politely as I could.
Max shrugged his shoulders and declared, “What is really ‘new’ these days? The important thing is not the idea, but the way you make it happen.” Louise broke a chilly atmosphere by feigning to vomit at her partner’s platitudes.
Julian, who had been staring out of the window with evident indifference, perked up considerably and started to scroll through his phone contacts to enlist support. After a short debate,
the consensus was that if we focused all our effort around a big event, we could probably create a property that we could own in perpetuity. If perpetuity was too long a milestone, then certainly the next year would do. I was excited by the idea and safe in the knowledge of one thing. With the amount of time Julian, Alice and I were spending in the office, none of us was going to win the competition.
***
Things moved pretty fast from there. When our PR representatives pitched ‘PrimaParent of the Year’ to a number of potential media partners, there was a lot of immediate interest and in the end a national newspaper agreed to get behind the project.
It all had to be done without a physical awards ceremony. We did not want to hire an anonymous function room in a large Central London hotel and hope that enough tables were sold to break even. Instead, we had the lovely idea to livestream the event from our offices, which, with a bit of dressing, we could make look like an ultra-cool soft-play area with a funky bar. We decided to build everything round a gigantic futuristic ball pond surrounded by café tables filled with family and friends. Adroit camerawork would make the whole thing look bigger, while ensuring at the same time that the photocopier and paper shredder were well out of shot. The effect was certainly distinctive – a sort of Whacky Warehouse meets Shoreditch Drug Den. Very on-brand.
The first problem arose twenty minutes before transmission. Sarah had brought the kids and they were giggling naughtily as they played in the ball pond. The broadcast director became tetchy and asked if they could get out so he could complete his checks. We had decided to conduct parent interviews in the ball pond to be unconventional. As Sarah lifted Emily, I noticed that her little cream tights were a rather muddy shade of brown. Sarah immediately flinched as she realised that our daughter had suffered what we expert parents call ‘a catastrophic nappy malfunction’. Sarah was staring at the ball pond as if she had dropped a contact lens. I sidled up to her conspiratorially and whispered nonchalantly out of the corner of my mouth, “What’s up?”
Sarah, professional unflappable healthcare professional that she was, leant towards me and quietly observed, “Our daughter has shat in the ball pond.” Almost in comic unison, we peered down and I thought I could see a small offending smear of excrement on a yellow plastic ball.
“It could be everywhere!”
This was not the sort of reception we had intended for our parental role models. I needed to get the ball pond cleared of any lingering contents of Emily’s loose nappy. Not the sort of task for which there is an automatic queue of willing volunteers. But that is why we have interns. You’ll recall Razia and her friends, who compiled our initial database? They were sitting in the corner drinking coffee and looking mildly disdainful at the intrusion of strangers into their safe office space. I broke the news to Razia, the ever-willing volunteer.
“Razia, grab a couple of people and get in the ball pond and start wiping all the balls. My daughter has done a number two in there.” (I thought it best to keep it vaguely mathematical.) As soon as I said it, I realised that this was likely to be one of the stranger requests I would make in the office. Razia, ever compliant and unfailingly industrious, smiled at me and simply said, “She’s your daughter. You do it.”
There was little time to argue and so I jumped into the infected area like a brave firefighter. Sarah passed me a muslin and I frantically started sifting through the thousands of balls as if cleaning them all in five minutes was a realistic possibility. Focused on the job (or more precisely the big jobbie), I became aware of Julian standing by the side of the ball pond, arms folded, with a vaguely amused and sardonic expression.
“Honestly Alex, you pick your moments to behave like a child!”
***
Fortunately, our finalists were being briefed elsewhere during the cleaning up operation, so they willingly got into the ball pond to be interviewed as the transmission began and were unperturbed by the high levels of sniggering from the audience. There were three who had made it through quite a lengthy screening process. We had received over five thousand entries, each one containing a fivehundred-word submission. They had all been moving testaments to modern parenting challenges and we used a lot of the content for subsequent PR activity, when we wanted to talk about how families were changing. Mr Clive Riordan from Basingstoke, however, did not take the competition as seriously as we would have hoped and sent us a picture of his portly naked frame, holding a handwritten sign reading ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ Not quite what we meant.
Our finalists all had moving stories to tell about superhuman feats of parental care, but there was a clear winner. Hankies at the ready.
Corporal Jack Elliot was thirty years old and had been in the Paras since he was eighteen. The regiment motto is Utrinque Paratus, translated as ‘Ready for Anything’, but Jack was not prepared for the overwhelming emotional impact fatherhood had on him. He had married his first girlfriend, Jane, when he was eighteen. All he wanted was to be a father, but years of trying resulted only in heartbreak for the couple. The complexity of receiving fertility treatment combined with Jack’s tours of duty in terrifying war zones made his domestic life very stressful, but Jack was a kind and loving husband. Two years ago, Jane miraculously found herself pregnant, despite the prevailing pessimism of the many doctors they had visited. Baby William arrived and Jack did not think he could be any happier. When William was only seven months old, Jack was sent to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty and his world was shattered.
It was particularly dangerous in Helmand in 2012 and, despite his training and years of brave service, Jack grew terrified that something would happen to him and he would not see William again. He became obsessed with ensuring that if anything bad occurred, his son would know who he was and what he believed. He began to record his thoughts on anything and everything on his phone. It was a simple attempt to codify his feelings and he called it ‘For William, with Love’. Observations, emotions, cultural references, jokes – anything he could think of. Whenever a signal allowed, he would send another digital file back to Jane to transcribe. He decided to illustrate each chapter, being a very competent artist, and the twelve completed personalised sketches became the visual representation of his love for his son.
He had just finished a thirteenth when he was suddenly called on patrol one evening. He didn’t have time to return the sketch to the safety of his locker and carefully folded it and placed it in his inside pocket. Some twenty minutes later, his jeep came under fire from the Taliban. Jack survived but was shot in the leg. Traumatised and debilitated, he managed to return home to William and vowed never to leave his side. He was now publishing his book and was the primary carer for William as he learnt to live with the physical and emotional scars of his injury.
Jack was the last candidate in the ball pond for his interview, which in hindsight was perhaps an error because of the discomfort it caused him entering and exiting. When he finished telling his story in a soft West Country burr, tears were streaming down cheeks and stifled sobs were followed by quiet applause. He became the coveted winner of the first ‘PrimaParent of the Year’ trophy.
Like all our early victories, it was the newsworthiness of the stories we generated that helped facilitate a dramatic impact. Our media partner ran a spread the next day with the emotive headline ‘Meet the UK’s Greatest Dad’ and used the observations of Jack’s book to start a debate about what wisdom we should impart to our children. Our association with this national conversation meant that traffic to our site continued ahead of our expectations. It was accompanied by an increase in interest in Julian and me as the founders of this new, noisy online brand. Suddenly, we had to think about our own profile.
***
Interview requests started to come in from a host of different sources. Beginning with the digital and marketing press, where we were treated as a curious start-up with a penchant for PR, it was the newsworthiness of our events that quickly attracted interest from the nationals. One morning I received a c
all from the business editor at The Times asking permission to send a journalist and photographer to cover us for a feature for an upcoming Saturday edition.
“I think we’ve captured something. They like us because we’re trying to make a difference,” I told Julian over coffee.
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes,” I continued, with my normal over-heightened need to make a speech. “I really do think we have a purpose. That’s why so many people seem to want to help us.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I know we have a purpose, it’s just mine is a bit more commercially focused than yours. Do you think we are doing this interview because we’ve done something noble?”
“Well, what else?”
“George Dobson rang the editor and told him to do it. Apparently, he had some rather compromising evidence to trade on a cabinet minister who was proving rather disloyal. Something to do with losing a custody battle because of a nasty alcohol problem. So yes, it was parenting that got us the interview. Just not the type of parenting we are meant to be advocating.”
“You think I’m very naive, don’t you?”
“Charmingly so.”
“That’s why we’re such an effective team. I see the good in people and you try to attack it.”
Julian nodded as if I had said something profound. He then concluded: “I suppose we need to work out what we want to say in the interview. As long as I do all the talking and am in front of you in the picture, we’ll be fine.”
***
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I went shopping to prepare for the interview. There was going to be a posh photographer and I wanted to look the part. After debate with Alice and some of the interns, I felt I should look like I was ‘Cool Dad at Home’ – jeans and a tee shirt, with a creative twist. Rummaging through some rails at a rather grimy Shoreditch store, I found a white tee shirt with the famous picture of a scruffy Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out. Elegantly styled with some Levi’s 501s and white Converse baseball boots, I arrived in the office ready to represent the youthful on-trend-cool-funky-down-toearth-chic-but-approachable look that I had effortlessly created.