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6M

P3

As I’m Me

By

Richard Hodgson

Synopsis

 

A formerly successful advertising agency, desperate for work, launches a campaign for a new lager despite knowing it’s crap. They sell the brewery the idea of ‘fast-forward-subliminality’ – quick shots in ads supposedly becoming subliminal at fast forward speeds.

The campaign’s run by Harvey Pratt, a creative, and his sidekick Guy Banks, a former stud recently married to Claire, who everyone thinks weird. She’s been forced off the smallholding she and her father rented, by his apparent suicide. She’s convinced he was murdered by a property speculator for the land.

At a mad meeting Banks is panicked into dreaming up ‘As I’m Me’ as the slogan for the ad. He doesn’t know why such a puerile phrase came to him, it’s actually subliminally connected with Claire having just bought an ancient Skoda 120 joke-mobile, despite being unable to drive.

Pratt gives a talk on advertising at a public school. He illustrates it with an example of how to con a bank. This fascinates Julian Previs, who wants to bankrupt his stepfather.

The beer flops and the advert gets banned for using subliminal advertising. Banks gets sacked, the ad becomes a cult, the slogan ‘As I’m Me’ becomes a catch phrase (a girly band even launch their first single on the back of it) and the beer starts selling well. A combination of Claire’s weirdness, the Skoda and the bankruptcy/suicide of the speculator (Julian’s stepfather) contrive to get her smallholding back.

 

Here’s the manager of the girly band in action:

 

“The point is, d’you want a hit or not? How much d’you really want it?”

A cacophony of shrill and completely unintelligible voices assaulted his ears. He turned his slightly deaf one towards them and noted once again that his dream woman would definitely feature a built-in fader among her other qualities. He should have been an A&R man, not a manager. Right now he’d settle for a bin-man.

“One at a time, dammit!” The noise ebbed and clarified into the monophonic moanings of Her Sluttiness.

“S’not what the song’s about. S’not what we wrote, in’it?”

“Ahh. So do tell me. What is the song about then?” He had her there.

“S’not the point. Fing is, it’s ours an’ we wrote it.” Cherise nodded in agreement with this analysis.

“You mean, apart from bits of the tune, all the chords, the arrangement and some of the words, which me an’ Jerry wrote and aren’t even claiming copyright on?”

The noise returned with a vengeance. He waved his arms about like some glam-rock guitarist on speed and Marshall amplification.

“Shut the hell up a minute! Look, I’ve always been dead straight with you haven’t I? I know you hate me for it most of the time but believe me, you need someone to be straight with you in this game. You loved me when I got you signed, I remember that; but you’ve sussed out a few things since then, ’aven’t yer! Like that getting signed means nothing unless you’re prepared to suspend your egos and treat the album as goods not art! You’re learning fast, all three of you: you know a bit about the game now. But you still haven’t hauled this in: charting a rookie record costs them huge money. They have to bung the bribable radio and TV people, make a video, throw money at P.R., buy copies to up it’s chart position, etcetera et-bloody-cetera. Result? On average they only promote one in four albums by unknowns. Yes, it makes no sense at all but that’s the way it works. They pay out all that money to get four bands to make four albums, decide three are crap and try and recoup a profit from the one. They pour squillions into promoting the one, the others go straight to oblivion. And unless we give them one hell of a good reason, that’s precisely where yours is headed because it’s basically no different, certainly no better, than any of the other totty groups they’ve got signed at the moment, and that’s not my opinion, it’s what they’re telling me!

 

The shrieks erupting at the description of Puh-leaze as a ‘Totty Group’ suggested his ‘dead straight’ approach had its drawbacks, but he pressed on regardless:

“That’s what they call you, not me!” he yelled. “Get it into your heads! You’re product as far as they’re concerned! All I’m suggesting is we beat them at their own game! If we can just make the single hit, we prove to them you can hit, and that pretty much forces them to promote the album!”

A short silence implied that he was making headway. He lowered his voice a little and adopted his Mr. Reasonable tone:

“What’s so special about ‘Touch Me Up’ anyway? It’s not as if it’s got any real shock value in today’s market; the radio’s choc-a-bloc with lyrics that’d have got banned ten years ago. I assume you want the single to get noticed by the radio stations? Well there’s nothing to beat latching on to a street-phrase that’s just catching on. So, what we do is, we go back to the studio, do a bit of swift overdubbing, change ‘Touch me up’ to ‘As I’m Me’, and we’ll be tapping into something that’s really happening right now. Don’t ask me why, but it’s –”

 

“But why that?” Her Sluttiness interrupted. “‘As I’m me’? It don’t mean nuffink! What’s –”

“For the benefit of those of us who’ve spent the last few weeks on the planet Zonk,” he continued with increasingly obvious impatience, “‘As I’m Me’ was the jingle in that TV advert that got banned. Brilliant marketing if you ask me: it was only getting broadcast somewhere up north to plug some local lager; it gets banned and suddenly the whole world wants to see it. There’s downloads of it all over the net, can you believe that? So the lager gets publicity to die for, starts selling all over – I tried it the other night, tastes like shit – and everyone’s seen this poxy ad, with As I’m Me running right through it. It’s becoming a bit of a buzz phrase; the red-top tabloids have picked up on it – you can’t put a value on that – I’ve heard kids on the street singing it – your kids, the ones who’ll buy your record – and best of all a couple of radio DJ’s are using it. Now, get this; it’s dead similar to Touch me up, but the melody’s not identical, so it’s a perfect opportunity to ride on a bit of a bandwagon without getting into any grief with copyright. It’s too good to miss!”

 

“It won’t fit the rest of the lyric.” protested Lorraine, who’d written some of the lyric. He was wise to her though, she was just worried about losing a few quid in royalty money.

“Why won’t it fit the lyric? Let’s go through it: ‘Ooh babe, want you to touch me; touch me up, touch me up, touch me up.’ Now, what’s the problem with ‘Ooh babe, want you to touch me; as I’m me, as I’m me, as I’m me’? It’s easier to sing for a start; scans better. And like I said, no need to alter any of the copyright percentages; it’s not as if we’re gonna pay some ad-man for dreaming it up, is it?”

“It just sounds pathetic.” mumbled Her Sluttiness. “Doesn’t work.”

“Never was exactly Bacharach was it?” he sneered.

“Backer what?” she asked. He covered his face with his hands and – with great presence of mind, he felt – resisted the temptation to throw himself out of the nearest window and end it all there and then.

“Oh, bollocks.” he sighed. “Look, just take it from me, Burt Bacharach writes bloody good songs alright? And yours isn’t. Have you any idea how hard it is to get radio play? They’re not all bribable you know, to them it’s just another new single by yet another new t – girly band. We’ve got to inject something or it won’t get played at all! And if DJ’s are starting to use As I’m me like a catch phrase, we give ‘em a single that sings it for ’em and they’ll play it.”

 

Another silence. He noticed Cherise was fiddling with her earring in that way she did when she was thinking hard. Her Sluttiness was scratching her arse which he took to mean the same thing.