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. 

THAT WAS A WEEK THAT WAS

It’s been an odd week. At last it’s a bit like summer. The temperature about normal for this time of the year feels like a heatwave. 18C. Get out the shorts. No perhaps not. Not the shorts.

Sunshine…. in many ways its made me think of the 1960s and, of course, the Beatles: 

“Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it's all right.
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here”

“It’s all right”.  Not if you’re Boris for whom it’s been a beastly week. 

Like that Harold MacMillan (another Eton and Balliol classicist) endured in the 1960s’ with the “Profumo Scandal”. This involved a sexual triste between voluptuous Christine Keeler and John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, with John lying when the story came out and standing up in the House of Commons and saying “I didn’t” but he had done it so off he went in disgrace. Imagine by the way having a Secretary of State for War  - the sort of thing Donald Trump would have liked. “Cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war.” 

It was around this time that the phrase “13 years of Tory misrule” became commonly used mostly and to good effect by Harold Wilson. So far it’s only  been “10 ½ years of Tory misrule”. Well you can see the parallels.

I’ve found the Dominic Cummings show a bit tiresome.  He may be very clever but he’s not very bright. He’s got little credibility and he’s failing to land a telling blow. Most of the country quite like bounder Boris in the same way they’d like a dog (a Labrador Retriever not a ghastly Dilyn dog) that steals the sausages and grins. It’s not being very British going public about his boss  like this and Dominic does look a bit of a pratt. You can loathe Boris (nearly everyone I know does) but he wins elections (including the referendum it’s three so far). 

Then I realised it wasn’t the 1960s that had really been on my mind at all. It was the 16th century.

I’m reading – yes I’m still reading –this time the third in the Hilary Mantel trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, “The Mirror and the Light”. She writes deftly and intelligently about what goes through men’s minds in politics. In Ann Boleyn, we have a precursor to Carrie Simmons.

Henry, overweight, sickly, self-obsessed, much married, also wanting to be “king of the world” has others around him to do his dirty work. He was as the French described him “Le vert gallant” - a bit of a louche spark – a lady’s man. But in Lord Thomas Cromwell who could “break a man’s jaw with one blow” we have a thug with the charm and wit to be always be on the right side of an argument. Dominic is about as important as a Christophe – a servant of Cromwell’s. He is an intellectual terrorist who would have been described in my youth (as many were) as “something of a disappointment” who didn’t like sport and was a nasty sneak. Dom, as he’s known, is about only one thing …revenge. Here’s how Shakespeare put that in Titus Andronicus:

“Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head”.

My week ended with a wonderful performance of Tchaikovsky’s  Serenade for Strings in C major by the Strings of the Royal Philharmonic.

After that revenge and political shenanigans seem a bit silly.

SQUEEZING OUT ALL THE JUICE

Beware old people lamenting the decline in values especially when despite their nostalgic lamentations things just get better and better. Beware me saying the era of the Beatles, Who and Cat Stevens surpass the musical efforts of Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran or White Stripes.

Just listen to “Bon Appetit” from Katy and discover originality or “Seven Nation Army” from White Stripes where a refrain has been commandeered by Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters “Oh Jer…emy Cor…byn,”….it’s a far left/Marxist political- earworm and it’s stuck in my head.  Things get different and move on but there’s still a lot of naked invention and it’s mostly wonderful… (oh shut up JC it’s still playing in my brain:-….”oh terribly boring…”)

But (always beware BUT) there’s been a perceptible downwards shift in originality, punctiliousness and love of quality that has been allowed to happen through cost-cutting  procurement experts settling for quick, cheap good-enoughness.

The benchmark for “good” is hard to find now. In a world where all presentations are competent no-one stands out. There are few bad cars so OK is a norm (no Allegros or Dolomites).  A sophistication/weariness of our palates means edible is a ubiquitous standard. Fashion falls apart yet quality is insanely expensive.

Two of the most overused derogatory expressions are “it isn’t rocket science” and “it isn’t art you know.” The answers to both of these, respectively, are “yes it is” and “well it should be”.

In a world where production efficiency and cost are the most important things we manage to restructure a premium brand like BA to a new commodity-low but on paper a more profitable business  but (big BUT) with the juice squeezed out. No more trolley services on our commuter trains - remember that spirit-lifting glass of wine on the way home after a terrible day? It’s all gone; too much cost focus; too little love.

The current furore with the Kensington Council over Grenfell is beginning to focus on cost reductions and the saving of around £300,000 by their moving from non-combustible zinc insulation to partly combustible aluminium. The Council employees presumably thought they were doing their job (save money) and hadn’t thought of the consequences. If they had they’d have gone over budget and got into terrible trouble.

We’re all spending too much time thinking about margins rather than quality of experience, taste or performance. And that’s where small businesses with their love of what they do and their customers’ reactions to it come in.

It’s time to reflect on making better, buying better quality and trying to be exceptional. This sounds unfashionable in an age of efficiency and engineered consistency but we’re spending too much time on the peripherals.

Brexit has made this worse. Having a great or a bad trade deal is irrelevant if what you are seeking to sell isn’t exceptional. Germany, after all, got great in cars by being better.

Get better. Stop squeezing out the juice. It’s the juice that gets us going not the orange.

NOSTALGIA ISN'T QUITE WHAT IT WAS

On Friday we went to Guildford for lunch with a friend with whom I shared my three years at Balliol College, Oxford. We sat looking over the Surrey countryside. It was all very pastoral. And it would have been perfectly in order for me to have been humming Parry’s “Jesusalem” especially as my friend’s a vicar.

But we spoke only briefly of the past. He asked if I regretted anything about my University days. I declared like Piaf “Je ne regretted rien…” But I did regret one thing.

I regretted not having worked harder. Not to have got a better degree but because today I have so much more energy than I did when I was 20 - ½ century ago - and I regret not having read more, thought more and squeezed more juice from the fruit I’d been given. I had a great time, made some great friends, learnt a lot but the Nutribullet that I called my brain was in idle.

Those were pleasant times…we had the Beatles, That Was the Week That Was, films like Zulu, the first Habitat … but they were sleepier times . Donald Campbell reached 276mph to break the land speed record.

Today it’s 763mph.

Instead of pleasant reminiscing my friend and I talked about now, the future and about what’s going to happen next. He’s unwell and being made worse by tooth-sucking doctors - I call them “pessimedics”. If only they’d say “Well done, you’re making great progress” the effect would be more beneficial. Advice to doctors: don’t give people pills. Inspire them to feel a bit better. Look forwards. As we both did.

The world we talked about is certainly more dynamic than the past. And more fun. How extraordinary to hear my grandsons talk about their favourite football teams (we can take Brighton & Hove Albion who are second in the Championship as a given):

“Arsenal, Manchester City, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Barcelona”

At 7 and 9 years old they are people who think beyond these shores. Wonderful.

I am currently writing a book on Marketing and whilst my grumpy nostalgic side threatens to surface when I encounter the debate on social media and “the need for an authentic interactive platform” it’s suppressed. Because give or take a bit of linguistic embroidery what’s new? Just an abundance of bright, shiny toys for lucky marketers to play with.

I wish, I really wish I were back in marketing; it seems to be so tricky now, yet so full of change and such fun.  A cornucopia is what we have. Great shops. Great food. Great wine. Great entertainment. Great memories - yes of course but keep these in perspective.

I feel the urge to use that quotation from 1957 from Prime Minister Harold MacMillan who predicted:
“a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime - nor indeed in the history of this country”

Yes. We’ve never had it so good.