Travesty of All Things Gay led an attack on Hamburg this week: a tightly cinched hurricane of Kenzo awfulness, nail polished fingernails and belts with buckles the size of his head, he arrived displaying all the sensitivity of a gorilla on a sunbed, and tore through the native politeness of the German agency and all who were unfortunate enough to come within his sphere.
We (by “we”, I mean ToATG, Laid Back Latin Creative, Sweet South African and Beaming German Account Director) went out for a fantastic dinner (and there’s a sentence that I didn’t think one would have cause to write of a trip to Germany), and although we stayed in a perfectly ghastly hotel (it being international Lederhosen Week, or something, and everywhere decent being full), I was in a suite that was roughly three times the size of my bachelor flat: two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a wrap around balcony: just a shame that I was only in it for five hours…
Travesty of All Things Gay had booked the restaurant for 11.30pm (not a time I want to eat anything, though I made a pretty good fist of my tuna tartare), and had decided that we needed to meet at 7am to organise a rehearsal, prior to the 8.30am creative presentation.
Fortunately, it is not just Laid Back Latin Creative’s accent that is impenetrably Latin: his body clock turns out to be too, with the result that come 7am, ToATG was running round like a man who’d just had a lit firework pushed deep into his rectum, and had then been invited to perform “Riverdance” – it was a joyous thing to see. Even though I was somewhat fucked off to have been raised from my bed needlessly early, the sleepy, relaxed, utter indifference of LBLC’s encounter with the hyper-ventilating ToATG was worth any amount of sleep sacrificed…
A less edifying spectacle was the bitter, small-minded comments of German Creative Director with Ludicrous Jewellery to the Client’s very apparent preference for LBLC’s work over his own. There was some very petty dismissal of what was (by any criterion) a significantly stronger idea than his own: including the ludicrous “theirs had more slides than ours did!” as if the inclusion of a trolley card was what had tipped the balance, rather than the fact that it didn’t make you want to jump into the canal, cackling. I really can’t stand this kind of thing: I’ve noticed that truly brilliant people are always the most unstinting in their praise of others, whereas it tends to be the second-rate who can’t think of a single good thing to say about anyone. Ludicrously Chic Creative tends to throw the adjective “Genius” about of the people whom he likes – and they are numerous. Whereas the markedly less talented Vicious Planning Director with Current But Unflattering Wardrobe can’t find enough adjectives to damn absolutely everyone around her.
Anyway German Creative Director with Ludicrous Jewellery should be happy enough: the one route that he presented that didn’t make my testicles rocket up inside my body for protection has gone into research alongside Laid Back Latin Creative’s work: where I trust it shall be pissed on from a great height by the hausfrau of Berlin and Hamburg…
