Digital economy or bust: the story of a new media startup - part 31

Speechwriting, badger racing and posts about Ricky Gervais – it was time for a change with £15k on credit cards

Sam here. I'm on the train up to the Edinburgh television festival. Our friend's not coming. Not enough money in the Enter4Entertainment expense budget, I said.
Now, I had to deliver a bit of bad news last week, but this is the weekend of truth. Obviously there will be a couple of posts about Ricky Gervais (who he, eh?) and all that, but there's a meeting at half three with Rupert Sawyer. Got a job for me, he says, on email, going to be one of the telly ideas, help him out in development – you know, badger racing, that sort of thing. Might be time for a change with £15k on the old credit cards.

"Hiya," said Sawyer downstairs at the conference centre. "I gotta go, meeting, but look I've brought along Sonia to sort things out."
Hang on, I thought, as Sonia, Rupert's frumpy head of press, sat down. What sort of job in telly was she going to offer me? "I thought …" I began.
"Rupert wants you to write a speech for him for next month, we'll pay you £1,000," she said. Obviously, I said yes, but in that moment I realised I would have to un-resign.

Banged out a post about Ricky Gervais in the press bull pen. Decided I would give the Google bloke giving the keynote a big fat miss, wondered what to do next. Some of the print hacks looked a bit jealous, as I trotted out the old routine about no editors, no constraints, instant web publishing.

Actually, the stats were decent, the Ricky post was out the gate nicely, and we were on 20k for the day; heading for 700k views on the month, a record. Checked the revenues too – several hundred from Google News, chunk over a thou from our ad partner, enough for the hosting and to pay £200 a week out to writers. Hmm.
It had to be time for a drink. "I'm celebrating," Paul said. "Got a job in PR." Ah, yeah. "Think I've got a job in TV," I said, gave it a bit of verbal and before long he was believing it. Bugger. Nothing for it then, if I got him pissed. I hoped he would forget, although at the George at half midnight, when Paul said "I got a script too" I had to crack and say Sawyer hadn't bitten on my badgers format.
Needing a bit of space I pulled out the riotphone, and decided it was time to chat with my business partner in London.

"Why are you such a spanner?"
Despite the time, he replied instantly: "Because I'm in business with you. How was Sawyer?"
"Good, yes, positive."
"Did you mention my scripts?"
"Yeah. Can you draw a picture of a knob using only ASCII characters?"
This kept us detained for several minutes, until suddenly Sonia bumped into me. "Hi, what you writing?" she said. I hid the phone and replied "Cocktail?"
I rolled up to the press room about lunchtime, in the most intense pain, with memories of waking up in my clothes on the floor at Sonia's. Grabbed a pile of mints for breakfast, started necking them, and headed in to watch BBC1 boss Danny Cohen.
Waking up towards the end of session, concluded there was only one thing for it: do a quick video interview on the iPhone, by rushing the stage at the end.
Wolfing down six mints, it was time to make my move. Except it became clear that the mints were disagreeing with my stomach. Felt like I was going to chuck up, so turned tail. Puked a bit on the wall on the way out, dribbled down my front, before making it to the toilets.
I reasoned it could be time for a swift getaway. But outside was Paul. "You all right mate?"
"Yeah, 'course, never felt better. About to do an interview."
"Really? My editor is here, he wanted to meet you. Need somebody to do my job, thought you might …"

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