THE SECRETS TO SUCCESS

 Well, I guessed that might capture your attention. The trouble is success is relative. Would you rather be Jacob Rees-Mogg – rich, with a beautiful house and Rolls Royce or a League Two footballer for Exeter City (9th in the table) and dreaming of promotion. I know which I’d prefer.

But success can’t have ever come in such abundance as it has for Richard Osman the gameshow host, TV producer and writer.

As a writer he’s breaking all publishing records. So far “The Thursday Murder Club” is only the 2nd work of fiction this century to sell over a million copies. His second book “The Man who Died Twice” sold 114,202 in the first week, one of the fastest opening-week sales of a book ever. The film rights for the first book have been secured by Stephen Spielberg. Richard is the Lionel Messi, or the Beatles, of fiction. If he wrote a book called “The Ditchling Sieved Lettuce Incident” it would sell another million.

Why? 

That’s the question the late Richard Rowe who was Head of A&R (Singles) at Decca Records from the 1950s to the 1970s and who rejected the Beatles would be still asking if he were still alive. 

Because the point is this - as Ann Treneman witheringly wrote in the Times last week -  “The Thursday Murder Club” is not a very easy or rewarding read. Not so says great novelist Ian Rankin it’s 'so smart and funny. Deplorably good’. Kate Atkinson is equally vociferous in her praise. But the point is I agree with Ann Treneman. I’ve read the book and found it rather weak and lacking in focus, and characterisation. My 98-year-old mother-in-law, still a keen reader of writers like Sarah Dunant, was more damning – “disappointing” she sniffed.

So why?

Three things:

1. Brilliant marketing

2. Richard is a carefully created modest and clever TV star we all know and love. He’s a good guy. An intellectual George Clooney.

3. He has settled into, and now owns a piece of unoccupied territory in literature. Old people as heroes. Forget that “love island” Sally Rooney and others compete in writing about. The 3 million over-60s are not so much an island as a continent with more millions of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who love them. How many Grandparents will get several copies of both books this Christmas? 

So well done Richard Osman. Several million pounds richer says you are right and that I am wrong in finding your first book a bit Enid Blytonish - “The Retirement Home Of Adventure.” It hasn’t certainly been a “pointless exercise”.

But how I want to write the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version of his books with mad Sister Martha, a series of gruesome murderers, poisoned food and the uncovering of a drug smuggling operation…” that may explain the huge number of visitors in fast cars” mused Inspector Dim. “We’re dealing with Geriatric Lines – it’s worse than County Lines.” 

Richard Osman has done for the world of literature what Richard Curtis has done with Love Actually and what films like Marigold Hotel and then, Mama Mia did for extrovert audiences. I may not like Richard’s books, but I love the effect they’re having. Whatever else they are nice books which seek to spread joy (and yes Enid Blyton in her day did just that too.)

Richard has sneaked into the role of National Treasure alongside Jamie Oliver, Stephen Fry, Judie Dench, Adele and others. It was about time we had someone like him spreading good.

I’m just so sorry I didn’t enjoy that first book more. 

THE AGE OF ENTERPRISE

Recently I was passed in the street by someone uttering some rather depressing words.

“It’s so hard. I have to spend my time keeping tabs on my people making sure they do things properly.”

It must be fun working for him. But he, the joyless administrator,  is one reason the Start-Up revolution is gaining so much momentum.

The other is we live in a world of increasing uncertainty where economists and leading opinion makers  say with equally great conviction “we’re on the edge of a cliff” or “things will settle down quite quickly in reality”.

Few of us comprehend the macro-economy but we understand our own small world quite well. We know that big companies are not to be entirely trusted when it comes to “downsizing”. We are tired of being a number not a face. Better to strike out on our own in a rowing boat than stick with Titanic Limited.

Today I’m focusing on the middle aged entrepreneur.

George Clooney is 58. He recently sold his Tequila brand Cosamigos for $1billion. 

In a paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research middle aged start-ups are shown to grow faster and survive longer. The FT says over-50s now account for 43% of those who start their own business.

So what’s going on?

What I call the Start -Up Revolution is being fuelled from three sources – Millennials, who don’t want to work for the people like that lugubrious joker on whom I eavesdropped, women – many post maternity-leave to whom the thought of returning to office politics is too awful and the disenchanted, redundant over 50s loaded with experience, skill and enough surplus cash to fund a start-up.

David Rowan has written a book “Non-Bullshit Innovation” in which he explores the mindsets of global tech start-ups and their disruptive, white-sheet-of-paper thinking. He rightly criticises the British government’s constant postponement of decisions about strategic priorities.

It’s ironic we have so many assets to play with. Here are just a few:
- English is the world’s lingua franca
- We are huge in gaming technology
- We are big in film production
- Our creative industries are booming

- We are still dominant in financial services
- Climate change is giving us the agro-friendly climate of France in the 1980s
- We have become accomplished at customer service (about time)
- Our recent record in innovation from luxury goods to food to technology is impressive.

We don’t blow our own trumpets but as the middle aged increasingly flex their innovative muscles a fanfare is becoming more noticeable. Take gin where a generation of middle aged entrepreneurs have introduced the most exotic, interesting variety of new gins imaginable. Sales of gin have doubled in the past five years.

We hear a lot about Silicon Valley. It’s time we started to think regardless of Brexit of ourselves as “Innovation Island”. Driven by the ambitions, skill and independence of spirit of the experienced, as well as the young and hungry, we are in good shape.

Government won’t help us (they seldom do)  but they can at least get out of the way.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published in October by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

WHAT I HAVE IN COMMON WITH GEORGE CLOONEY

George is in the new film “The Monuments Men”. It’s about a team of curators, museum directors and art historians who are sent into Germany near the end of the Second World War to save Nazi plundered art from destruction as the Germans realise their game is finally up. As Clooney puts it in the film:  "We’re fighting for our culture and our way of life. If you destroy your enemy’s achievements, it’s as if they never existed. That’s what Hitler wants."

Clooney, a recent convert to the arts, because of the film I guess, has become a lover of Greece and wants us to return the Elgin Marbles to the Pantheon (sic) – it’s the Parthenon, George. He has a point. We should do anything we can to help Greece.

I was there last week helping at a multinational conference. It was at the Hilton in Athens, acres of marble, thirteen floors of luxury, two terrific restaurants and a fantastic conference. As George might have said “what’s not to like?”

It gets better.

Outside it was hot and sunny with those deep, blue Aegean skies. The Greeks it appears didn’t have a word for “blue” but they liked the colour a lot hence Homer’s description of “wine dark seas.” I have a new expression “deep-eyed skies”. Every time I see one of those Greek skies I think it’s like looking into a beautiful girl’s blue eyes. George and I have so much in common.

As I stood on the terrace in one of those conference lulls wondering why I hadn’t packed the factor 30 I realise how I’d missed real sunshine over the recent bleak months and how my mood was lifting. There’s something indescribably sublime about this country. I had a Greek salad in which the tomatoes tasted of sunshine, a fish meal in which the parrot fish tasted of fresh morning waves whilst the waiters argued that the olive oil was not just good but super-premium. And their story about the red wine lasted a solemn five minutes and was about the Xinomavro grapes in it. The word means “acid black” and the grapes, rich in tannin, age beautifully. It’s so smooth they intoned. It was …. and so strong too.

And the economy? Petros Christodoulou of the National Bank of Greece is sounding upbeat as were the Troika on a recent visit. Being a young Greek and out of work – which you probably are – is pretty awful but GDP growth of just under 3% is forecast for 2015, deficit reduction is ahead of plan and  tax receipts are up.

As the sun shone and the strains of last year’s Greek Eurovision Song entry by Kosa Mostra “Alcohol is Free” – it came 6th by the way – filtered into the Athenian air I felt the yearning to spend more time in this amazing country. The service in the hotel and restaurants and elsewhere were of a new, more focused and more attentive style than I recall. So…..welcome back my Greek friends.

“Καλώς ήρθατε και πάλι τους Έλληνες φίλους.”