Remember when life was fun? Having just spent half-term at home with the missus and kids, I am actually desperate to get back to work.
Luckily I did manage to avoid the rather long list of DIY chores Mrs Idol had in store for me but I am still seriously out of pocket. Not from the kids – they are old enough to know better – but from taking her on days out.
Anyway, you may remember that a few months ago I’d hatched a plan to launch my own DM and digital agency, Idol Hands. The thing is, how difficult can it be? When you see some of the idiots out there who have made money from this stuff, I reckon me and Mr Hands will be able to clean up.
The website is now under construction – in Budapest, of course – and I even managed to nail down the price to £150. Good old Sebastian, he’s going to be part of the agency team, too, as he is cheap as chips. OK, we will have to juggle the work a bit as he is still at primary school but I’m sure he’s worth it…
Now I am doing the rounds of the ‘marriage brokers’. Bloody hell, I didn’t realise how many of them there were. Whatever happened to the good old days when a quick flirt with Suky Bunker (now Thompson) guaranteed you were on the shortlist? Bah.
Still, setting up a business in any sector is a daunting prospect so I thought I’d seek divine inspiration from reading Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson. Now you’d think there wouldn’t be much left to discover after his life had been raked over by the media – the general consensus being that he was a controlling, grumpy genius with a penchant for shouting at people.
Mind you, I never realised what an old hippy he was. In one of his first jobs at games maker Atari, Jobs ended up being pushed onto the night shift because he never washed and other employees complained they were distracted by how bad he smelled. Jobs didn’t wear shoes, had long hair and simply refused to bathe. “He was a pretty abrasive and in some ways cantankerous character,” Walter Isaacson writes.
And Jobs didn’t just try out drugs, he thought that taking them was one of the best things he’d ever done, telling Isaacson: “Taking LSD was one of the most important things in my life.”
So, there you have it – the secret to success. Take drugs, don’t wash and be grumpy… Now who does that remind me of in this industry?
