Fairy Tales from La-La Land

Hollywood Stories
It's amazing, the battle stories that you hear from your colleagues. They may be on the same case only in a different country, but things can turn out so differently, so for the benefit of my LA colleagues, here's the story from the London camp. One of my cases in January involved a joint case between our London and LA offices. It turned out to be a brutal case, but only on the LA side. Whilst in London, everything seemed fine and we were going to deliver a fantastic presentation on the opportunity for our client in the UK, our chums in 'La-la Land' (the case was on kids' television, hence the affectionate name) were battling away, when three of our team were hospitalised. Let's just say that they didn't get run over trying to cross over a plastic toy train set.

Mind you, we had been working pretty hard on that case. In the final weeks, 24 hour cycles were being run - I would take over the work at around 8/9am in the morning, work through until sometime in the evening, when it was most convenient to hand the baton onto my counterpart, Aryeh, in LA, and he would then hand it all back over to me the next morning. Slick machine, although on one occasion the panic call from LA came at around midnight at home and a subsequent need to assist them in the US.

With all that in mind, on the London side, things were just fine. Not much pain, Gary, my colleague here in London having tremendous fun going to the London Toy Fair, and myself, in spite of a couple of firefights for the LA guys, it was actually just fine. Mind you, the amusement of the subject matter did ease the pain, for example, turning up your computer speakers to play a few of the theme tunes out to the rest of the office - can annoy others as well as being funny to you.

Anyway, sorry to all of you in LA, but I'm not sure what happened to you guys either. It may have just been down the partner in the LA office...



"They obviously don't have much of a sense of humor over there"
Panic call. Client calls up asking for our credentials and experience in the media industry, and the London Partner on the case and my manager are out. Only one option left. Call up the LA partner. Can he fix it? Yes, he can. If I can find him. Can I find him? No I can't. Finally get his PA on the phone. "He's in a meeting... [conversation follows]... please hold."

"Hello, Lester the Molester!"

The "Molester" takes a moment for thought: "Err, was it me, or did he really just say that on a speakerphone with everyone hearing that... Has our Kevin been watching too much Barney the Dinosaur? Or was he hospitalised as well and is really in a lunatic asylum?"

Kevin puts the speakerphone on mute and says to his team, "They obviously don't have much of a sense of humor over there."

Sarcasm, my dear boy, is a British invention. Ok, maybe not, but we'd win any competition that involved it. Kevin, must do better. Or, stick to putting on a Barney the Dinosaur suit instead. ;)

Sadly, I'd like to put in much more of a story over here, but the rest is boring as we sorted out what the client wanted. As Douglas Adams once told the Oxford Union (the only time I was in the audience in the Union), real life stories are boring and don't have an interesting ending and that's the case here. Shame. It could have formed part of an episode of Fraggle Rock, I'm sure.



Anyway, to the LA guys, I know you guys had checked my website out, so hi to you all. Anyway, I'm sorry to hear what happened there - we in London don't know what happened in LA as well. But we hope everything is well now. For us Londoners, however, we really enjoyed this case. Now it's time to turn on the TV and watch CBeebies, I think...



Name-changing
I could change my name so I could avoid being called Lester the Molester, but then, I could one day use it to strike fear in the hearts of people (particularly one former partner in LA who might read this). And of course, how could I call myself Lester the Jester if I had changed it.

But changing names can be good sometimes. One of my dear friends wasn't sure she liked her name any more, so I helped her find a new name. And a pretty one at that. So, I hope you like your new name, Ayanna ;)



Happy Birthday, Alison
To that beautiful girl who escaped L.E.K. and is making her mark in the world of investment banking (and not in the world of cookery books ;)), Happy nth birthday to you! Hope you have a great one and 21 shots of vodka for ya! (Well, ok, don't want to deprive you, so have a few more!)