What a droll place the BBDO creative department must have been in
the 70s when Peter Mayle was still in command and hadn’t yet succeeded
in turning Provence into a magnet for every Thomas, Richard and
Harriet.
There was John O’Driscoll, who liked to immerse himself in his work by
appearing in front of the Playtex account team clad in bra and
girdle.
Not to be outdone, John Horton and Richard Foster liked to frighten
visitors by installing a fully dressed tailor’s dummy - complete with a
noose around its neck - in the lift.
And what of a young copywriter who did some mould-breaking work for
Harrods?
Now what was his name? Oh yes, Tim Delaney. Very bright. Whatever became
of him?
Need you ask. ’I was working, as ever,’ sighs the Leagas Delaney group
chairman (Most famous phrase: ’If you can’t be bothered to come in on
Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday’) by way of explaining his
absence from the departmental reunion at the Groucho Club last
Friday.
One person who did make it was the director Paul Weiland, who welcomes
the infrequent get-togethers for keeping him in touch with his lost
youth. ’I only go because it’s the only party I can turn up to where I’m
the youngest person in the room.’ He’s 46.
’I think everybody wanted to get together before we all die.’
Ex-BBDO types from as far away as Australia turned up for the bash while
Mayle made it across the channel from his home in France, prompting
wistful recollections of a department which seemed to save its best
creative work for its expense accounts.
’We had so much fun that it wasn’t like work at all,’ Weiland, then a
humble copywriter, recalls. ’Peter used to take us to lunch all the
time. But he had charisma - and he still has it - by the
bucketload.’
Delaney has similar fond memories of a man he calls ’a natural
anarchist’, adding: ’He once asked me to fire a friend who wasn’t even
in my group. It was hard - but I did it.’
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