by Alex Horne
Encouraged by this more blatant form of promotion, I decided to give mural branding another chance, this time investing honk rather than time and mileage into the spreading of my words. I knew that if money was no object, wholesale advertising was one quick way to spread my message. But unfortunately I didn’t have the financial might to compete with the three thousand adverts that bombard the eyes of an average person every day.
Luckily the Edinburgh Fringe festival was approaching and I would be there performing an hour-long show (called Birdwatching and about, yes, birdwatching), so could dip my toe in the marketing pool without getting completely soaked. So, at what was still quite considerable cost I had a thousand posters designed and printed, on top of those that would advertise Birdwatching itself, all ready to be slapped up around the Scottish city throughout the festival. On simple but gaudy green and red backgrounds, these read either ‘IS ADVERTISING BOLLO?’ or ‘IS THIS A WASTE OF HONK?’. The email address, [email protected], was printed at the bottom of each. How many people would have their curiosity pricked by the slogans?
When August arrived I hurtled up to The Edinburgh Fringe with more fire in my belly than ever. Alongside the posters, I planned to pass on my words to the biggest captive audience comedy ever gets by every means possible. For a whole month, I thought, I would weave my magical words into my birdy story and subliminally plant ‘honks’ and ‘pratdiggers’ into my crowds’ minds on a nightly basis. I’d drop ‘bollos’ and ‘mental safaris’ into every press interview like a littering youth so the newspapers’ readers would be forced to wade through heaps of my new words. This would be my year, I told myself, I would own Edinburgh and when my show sold out and I won every award going I’d shout ‘bollo’ as loudly as my lungs allowed me.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t counted on the other two thousand shows at the Edinburgh festival that year, about a quarter of which were in the comedy section. I hadn’t factored in that every single one of the myriad performers would also have travelled up thinking this would be their year. Otherwise, why would they too have spent about ten grand (mostly on advertising) in order to perform a show for an hour every day for a month?
It’s never easy to be heard above that din, no matter how powerful your lungs. Ultimately, my show about an ornithological competition against my dad didn’t cause quite as much of a rumpus as I’d hoped. Sure, I had a great month with my friends, it was a privilege to perform at the greatest arts festival in the world and I was proud of my story, but in Verbal Gardening terms, the bumper harvest was washed out.
During the course of the run I did have a chance to get a seed published in The Times via an article I was asked to write about how the Internet is influencing the world of comedy, but again my voice was muffled. My sentence,
If you walk down the Royal Mile during the festival everyone knows you’ll be attacked by a pratdigger clad in novelty T-shirt or toga, proffering a clasp, cake, comb or clock, all emblazoned with the witty title of their show
was savagely edited so that ‘pratdigger’ became the far less evocative ‘someone’. Presumably ‘pratdigger’ was highlighted by the spellchecker as an unrecognised word and, instead of researching the word or asking the author, the editor decided to scratch it out. I can’t blame him. It would take a brave man to suddenly print ‘pratdigger’ in Britain’s oldest newspaper, a word that hasn’t once appeared in print since the paper was founded in 1785.
Worst of all, the posters I’d invested so much in and which had been plastered all over the city failed to yield a single response. I went out with the flyposting team to watch the action and film passers-by stopping in their tracks to wonder about the value of advertising but, to my dismay, they were more interested in posters involving naked flesh than mere words. The poster for that year’s main award-winner Brendon Burns’s show, So I Suppose This Is Offensive Now?, featured images of the media-savvy comic in a wheelchair, on a cross and blacked up. My simple but gaudy green, red and purple backgrounds couldn’t contend with that sort of eye candy. Just as my ‘charming, warm and cosy’ show (Scotland on Sunday) was no rival to Burnsy’s ‘controversial’ (Guardian), ‘ferocious’ (Evening Standard) and ‘confrontational’ (The Times) hour.
Adding financial insult to psychological injury, forty-eight hours after all thousand of my posters had been stuck up around the city, about 950 of them had either been ripped down or covered up by other people’s adverts. Every comic complains about how expensive the festival is (just as punters protest at how much it costs to see shows nowadays) but willingly pays thousands of pounds each year for these posters. Edinburgh Council doesn’t like posters at all so takes them down. But this is the one chance for performers to be spied in comedy’s biggest shop window, so they put more posters up. Then other, bigger comics put theirs up on top. Then the council returns and takes them all down again. This goes on all month. The effect is that most people don’t bother looking at posters at all and they become a pointless blur of boastful colour. No one emailed me either way, but, in my opinion, advertising is bollo, at the Edinburgh festival at least. My posters certainly were a waste of honk.
The only thing that really sells tickets is word of mouth. That’s what I should have been focusing on; not winning awards or doing interviews or making clever posters, but putting on the best show possible that people would go away talking about. That’s all that really matters. Of course, some adverts do work. My favourite Edinburgh stunt was an enormous, five-metre long billboard promoting punmeister Tim Vine slapped high on the face of the old Gilded Balloon. As you trotted down from the Royal Mile towards the Pleasance you couldn’t help but notice a giant picture of the gagsmith’s smiling face, towering letters spelling out his name, then, as you got closer, the words, ‘will not be appearing at this year’s festival’ written in a much smaller font underneath. That was a great joke and a genius ad. People, like me, are still talking about it today. I needed to think more laterally.
7
My Edinburgh failures were not the only examples of my early misguided thinking. Whilst reluctantly researching a more aggressive strain of graffiti than my ethical but sisyphean* service-station toilet abuse, I stumbled across a modus operandi that actually appealed to my goody-two-shoes* sensibility. Normally, of course, graffiti ‘artists’ scrawl or scratch their messages on public walls with paint or ink or sharp implements. But for some time, an idea called ‘Reverse Graffiti’ has been gradually spreading, the basic principle of which is that participants remove unwanted filth instead of applying it. Having found a suitably dirty wall, they simply rub away the grime in such a way as to spell out ‘clean’ words or pictures on the otherwise grotty* background. You can do it with fingertips on a window. In fact, you’ve probably witnessed it yourself, if you’ve ever seen a dirty van with the bon mot ‘clean me’, smeared out of the dirt. It’s not against the law to clean a wall, and companies such as Microsoft and Smirnoff have sniffed a loophole and started to experiment with advertising in such a way.14
Whilst wandering around London one afternoon, I stumbled upon the perfect wall to have a go myself. It was part of a road called Stainer Street, appropriately enough, which runs from London Bridge station to the London Dungeon; a suitably gloomy location with the grimiest walls I’d ever seen (at least, the only walls that were so dirty they actually caught my attention). Caked in decade-deep muck as thick and as viscous as tarmac,* they appeared to have been painted black but could have been any colour underneath.
I persuaded Mr Palatino to meet me at said street with a sponge, so that we could wipe clean the words ‘Honk if you’ve got Honk’ on a wall. I’d thought of the slogan that afternoon and was pretty pleased with myself. If you didn’t know that ‘honk’ means money it wouldn’t make sense, but I was going to throw in a few pound signs at either end to make it a little clearer. And anyway, I was curious to see if any unindoctrinated people would honk their horns on the off chance that they did indeed have ‘honk’. Either way, the wo
rd ‘honk’ would be seen by thousands of commuters.
Or so I hoped. Once again, however, my plan failed, mainly because it was so well laid.
At half past midnight on a Tuesday, when the last Tube had grumbled out of the station and the streets were as empty as they ever are in London, I raised a soapy sponge and wiped it down the wall. This was to be the first upright of the rugby posts, the ‘H’ of the first ‘Honk’. Mr Palatino pointed his torch at the wall so I could see where to begin the crossbar. But we could see no mark on the wall. I looked at my sponge. It was already black. I grimaced and wiped again. Still, no change to the wall. I then scrubbed for thirty seconds, Mr Palatino shone, and at last, there was something – a faint impression of a line on the bricks.
We crossed Stainer Street to admire our first mark from afar. But we couldn’t. It wasn’t visible more than two metres away. What’s more, when we returned to the spot we realised we hadn’t actually cleaned a line away, we’d just made a wet line that reflected in the torchlight.
By now my sponge was already ruined and both of us had lost hope. Mr Palatino decided that rather than sacrifice a new sponge, he’d be better off going home to his girlfriend and surprising her with a spongy gift. ‘Every cloud,’ he said. ‘Quite right,’ I agreed, ‘there’s no point flogging a dead horse’ (clichés invented by John Milton in Comus and the Victorian politician John Bright in Parliament respectively). So we parted company and I headed home on a night bus clutching a bucket full of pungent water. I always knew I’d have to get my hands dirty if I wanted to pull this off but this was ridiculously literal.15
Unbowed, I soon attempted another publicity stunt a couple of miles from Stainer Street at Lord’s Cricket Ground, where England’s team were playing Sri Lanka’s. Again, I thought, thousands of people would be looking at this spot, millions even, thanks to coverage on Sky Sports. All I had to do was focus their attention on one of our words.
The previous Christmas, the last before my tkday, my younger brother Chip had given me and Rachel a black umbrella as a present. Normally, this wouldn’t be anything to write home or in a book about (unless you were Jonas Hanway, the first Londoner to use one in the early 1750s, who Henry Hitchings says ‘was ridiculed for doing so’ in his fantastic book The Secret Life of Words). But this was no ordinary umbrella. It was a double umbrella; an unwieldy Batman-like contraption that opened to display a remarkable wingspan, with two canopies conjoined to protect the loving couple beneath from a romantic downpour. It was a wonderful gift, yielding all sorts of appreciative noises on the day itself, and then stowed safely at the back of a cupboard under the stairs from that day hence. It was far too heavy to actually use.
But, with the characteristic clouds gathering over St John’s Wood, I was glad I’d heaved the mighty mechanism to the home of cricket, and when the first drops of rain plopped down onto our heads I smiled while those around me grumbled. I was with a good friend of mine called Tom, rather than Rachel, so the romance of the situation was a little dampened, but it was with pride that I unfurled the bi-brolly (my word) to cover the two of us, and reveal the words ‘THIS IS BOLLO!’ writ large across the broad canvas.
The previous evening I’d spent just over an hour painstakingly cutting white gaffer tape into the shapes of the letters and sticking them onto the opened umbrella. Now they blared out across the ground; amid the drizzle a beacon of British humour to be broadcast round the world now, and for evermore.
Or so I thought until I asked Tom to photograph the scene for my own records and he told me, quite bluntly, that it hadn’t worked. The letters had become unstuck in the rain. They’d slipped and slid around what had become a wholly unhesive surface and looked less like ‘THIS IS BOLLO’ and more like ‘BOTH IS SO ILL’, either an embarrassingly ungrammatical whinge about our own rain-affected health, or an unfounded rumour about the great Ian Botham.
I frantically tried to rearrange the letters to at least make the word ‘bollo’ legible but to no avail. The letters were adamant that they’d rather stick to each other than Chip’s thoughtful present. My only consolation was that at least the few damp supporters around us would have heard me repeatedly use the word ‘bollo’ uttered in exactly the right context as I flapped around with the tape. Tom, by the way, was a common man, not Rare, had no idea why I was so desperate to get the word bollo on my brolly, thought I was behaving quite irrationally and very much regretted accompanying me on what he’d hoped would be a relaxing afternoon’s cricket. Needless to say, Sky didn’t broadcast any of these shenanigans.
I tried, too, to hijack the world of football after finding out that Mr Palatino’s brother had tickets to watch Ukraine play at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. ‘We can use him,’ suggested Mr Palatino. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind taking along a Verbal Gardening sign if we ask him to.’
‘Then we must,’ I wrote back. ‘I’ll make the man a banner.’
This was a good plan, backed up by hard evidence. The summer before our campaign began, another came to an end. Back in 2004, Ian Dowie, the former Crystal Palace manager (and Oldham Athletic, Charlton Athletic, Coventry City and Queens Park Rangers, all in the space of ten years) first used the word ‘bouncebackability’ when describing Crystal Palace’s season in the Premiership and his club’s ability to bounce back after conceding early goals. At the time, ‘bouncebackability’ was not, according to the dictionary, a word. But Dowie wasn’t stupid. He was, in my opinion, a determined Verbal Gardener. After all, he does have a Masters in Engineering, one step higher than Carol Vorderman’s degree in the same subject.
Dowie continued to use his word and people started to notice. ‘Bouncebackability’ soon gained cult popularity that was boosted by Sky’s popular show Soccer AM, whose presenters started their own campaign to get the word in the dictionary. At matches all across the country fans wore shirts and held placards emblazoned with the word, and within two years it was accepted by the OED.16
Incidentally, the aptonymic Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger is currently trying to plough a similar furrow with his word ‘footballistically’ (in an interview he said, with his straight face, ‘Footballistically, it’s a surprise when David Beckham went to America,’ and then employed it as an adjective saying the press criticism of Sven-Göran Eriksson was ‘not footballistic’). This is a word I have personally embraced and attempted to spread both here and elsewhere. Within a couple of seasons we’ll all be saying it. After all, the word ‘gamesmanship’ was only invented in 1947 in Stephen Potter’s guide to winning, The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship.
So Mr Palatino’s footballistic scheme was a sound one. Being a World Cup, with just a little effort we could spread our words across the whole globe, not just the country! Thinking and acting swiftly, I contacted Palatino’s brother, told him the whole lengthy story and, when he agreed to help, welcomed him into the fold, with the name Lord Gloucester.
Whilst visiting my parents the next day, both of whom were unaware of their middle son’s current venture, I spent an afternoon in the garden daubing a couple of double sheets with yet more Verbal Gardening messages. The first, a bald ‘$hevchenko’s Got Honk!’ referring to the Ukrainian striker who had recently signed for Chelsea for the remarkable (and, with hindsight, ridiculous) price of £30 million. The second, a simple England flag with the words ‘This Is Games!’ pessimistically predicting our team’s performances. ‘Games’ had been put on the back-burner long enough, I felt. This was no time for sentimentality. Our words must succeed.
At one point, I looked up from the garden, gritting my teeth, clutching my paintbrush and trying not to flick more paint on my trousers, and saw my parents looking back at me with unconcealed concern writ all over their caring faces. But I was pleased with my work. The sheets had become banners, Verbal Gardening standards that would carry our words forwards. I raced up to my bedroom and admired them from above. They were each the size of our garage, jumbo letters spelling out brave new words on vast canvases. Surely this ti
me our words would be noticed?
Unfortunately, while Lord Gloucester did have tickets to watch Ukraine at the World Cup, I found out much nearer the time that they were only for one match: versus Tunisia. This was not the glamour tie I was imagining. But it was a televised match (on ITV4) and I for one was glued to my set when match day came.
For what I can only imagine will be the only time in my life, I watched the entire encounter between Ukraine and Tunisia. ‘Encounter’, I think, is the right word with which to describe the fixture. It was neither a clash, nor a confrontation. At best it was a get-together. Tunisia needed to win to progress. They didn’t come close. They were village.* Ukraine weren’t much cop either. Near the end Shevchenko tripped himself up in the penalty area, won a penalty and the game. Ukraine prevailed 1–0. The lack of footballing excitement meant that ITV did show more shots of the crowd than usual, but there was no sign of my signs. An hour after the games game I received a brief text from Lord Gloucester in Germany:
Had a disaster on the way in. A stern man with a stick wasn’t happy with the banners. Said they were too big.
A couple of days later Lord Gloucester returned home, a weary soldier bearing news from the frontline:
The Ukraine–Tunisia match was a crying shame, both in terms of my mission and the game itself, though there is a chance that something positive came out of it with the Sheva/Honk banner. Whilst both were confiscated on my way in (mainly I think because they couldn’t be sure they weren’t defamatory but supposedly because they were ‘too big’) the Honk one amused all the security guards in their little corrugated hut greatly, with the consequence that when I came to collect it it had been ‘misplaced’. Or at least that much was implied in German with an accompanying, yet rather uncharacteristic, Teutonic shrug. I like to think that maybe, just maybe, it got an enthusiastic airing and a rapturous reception in the kinds of areas of Berlin that unoccupied security guards like to frequent, but that could all be wishful thinking.