The client base began to grow – in particular, the list of personalities – and then, three years ago, I set up another company to do consumer PR, looking after clients such as BT.The entertainment side went through the roof. One of my friends had an independent production company, and I rented an office within their office to begin with, before getting my own space. The equations didn’t work out: they were offering me pounds 25,000 to work for them, yet I would be bringing in double that in business – so, at the age of 22, I decided to set up on my own.I wasn’t nervous about it; I just did it. And I had to ring up all the people whose shows he’d agreed to go on and cancel.Beer Davies was great, but after a while my style of PR and theirs were moving away from each other. In 1992 I resigned, and the next day, I was offered three jobs, but I knew other agencies wanted me because of the clients I had. It was all due to start on a Monday, but on the Friday evening his PA rang up and cancelled the whole week of interviews. But my first project was looking after Pete Townsend, who had a video out, and I put a schedule of interviews together for him to promote it.
I went in that afternoon at two o’clock, and started work at three.At Beer Davies, I looked after clients like Viz Magazine, Hello!, Victoria Wood, Rory Bremner, Virgin Video and Channel 4 programmes like The Word. I got back to him and said: “If you’re that busy, there must be something I can do for you.” He said he couldn’t offer me anything over the phone, but the next day one of the partners of Beer Davies Publicity phoned, saying that Mark had told him about me and that he had a job going. They were all were really good to me, giving me advice and passing me on to other people Eventually I was due to see Mark Borkowski. But he was in the middle of doing PR for Ian Botham’s walk, and I was told he was so busy he couldn’t see me for a month. I’d edited my school magazine – which had had a big entertainment section in it – so I knew some entertainment PRs, and went to see people like the directors of publicity of Twentieth Century Fox and Rank, and the head of press at CBS.
Nine months into it, though, I was made redundant.
But that turned out to be a great blessing in disguise I thought I’d like to do entertainment PR. But Underwoods’ personnel people said they would get me a job at head office, as marketing assistant – doing PR, marketing and in-store promotions, which sounded far more interesting. At the time I had a Saturday job working at Underwoods the chemist, and I rang them to say I was giving it up to go and work for Lloyds Bank in London. I wanted to go to drama school: I was always in school productions, and took classes at evening and weekends. I got two O-levels, and then went into the sixth form, but after a couple of months I felt I left. I thought about going straight into drama school, but I was just 17, and they like you to have “seen a bit of life” first So I decided to get a job for a year. I guess I am telling them I learnt pretty early you should always speak up.
The thing is, in America people will listen.”Audrey Gillan is chief reporter with `Scotland on Sunday’ and recently completed a Laurence Stern fellowship on `The Washington Post’.. I think I am trying to work out myself why it was me who got away. “Sometimes it is a very poetic speech, but at other times I am pointing out faces in the crowd and saying I knew your mother. She tries to explain it through a dream that she frequently has where she returns to her high school to give a motivational speech to the children there.”Always in the dream I am on the stage at my old school and I have put books in front of me. I am trying to explain to the kids that if they are ever going to get anywhere they need to have an education and a good sense of who they are I try to tell them I know how hard it is,” she says. “Smart people in Britain will go into all kinds of journalism.
