Arriving from my provincial home town aged nineteen to take up a menial job at the biggest, most fashionable advertising agency in London, J Walter Thompson in Berkeley Square, in the Swinging Sixties was a rather daunting experience.
I’d never really encountered people like this before. Many of them seemed to be hiding the fact that they were Lord This, or the Honourable That, or Sir Somebody Other. And the ones who didn’t have that sort of pedigree carried themselves with a sense of entitlement that seemed to carry all before.
The boss of the little department that I was in was Jan. She would arrive at the office around 11am each morning, check that we, the boys, had done the morning’s rounds, and prepare herself for lunch. This was a major operation. Basically a very pretty girl, she transformed herself, with the aid of trowelfuls of make-up into a clone of Mary Quant.
And when this was done, she would pop off to Knightsbridge to lunch with some young Viscount or other.
Returning slightly before 3pm, she would go through the same ritual as in the morning – and launch herself a second time, this time upon the evening’s entertainment.
I remember it all so well. It was another world.
Posts
