On 14th September I will be having dinner at The Ivy. I tell you this, of course, purely in the interests of the kind of accountability and transparency that we responsible bloggers keenly aspire to. I’m going to be there because I’m helping to judge the Guardian Student Media Awards this year. I think I’ve been chosen because I am now so far from being a student (about half way between graduation and interment I’d say) that I can bring some distance to bear on the topic. I’ll be judging Best Student Web Site with Emily Bell who runs Guardian Unlimited.
In which I try, after 25 years of blogging, to drop my ironic stance a bit.
Don’t know about you, but the last time I was at the Ivy was when Megalomedia bought part of Webmedia and that nice Mr Saatchi and his wife hosted a meal for us. I don’t expect to be back there any time soon. Enjoy.
You know, that’s the last time I was there (1995 or 1996?). It was meant to inaugurate the glorious Megalomedia era. Saatchi was the perfect host: interesting and interested. We all moved around the table between courses so we could meet as many people as possible. I felt like the wide-eyed, ragged-arsed imposter in the room but did my best to come over as the sophisticated veteran. You got a bit drunk. Richest (and most annoying) man in the room: Jean Pigozzi – maybe fifty times richer than Saatchi. The week after we took Saatchi’s money I met with top media analyst Lorna Tilbian and she told me to steer clear of Saatchi because all he could do was lose money (“if you’d given him a quid in 1980 you’d have a penny by now”).
Well, I’ve been out to a restaurant called PUG in Chiswick which is all the rage apparently and I am typing with one finger and rather inebriated – surely you mean internetment and not ‘interment’. What? What does interment mean? Is it a wiki thingy? I’m rather sozzled that I have to type this with one eye open only. I think I’ve managed quite well so far.
Here’s a warning to all you students:
A few years ago this Steve Bowbrick was a judge (or the judge maybe) of the Guardian’s Blog competition. Anyway, the tosser let me schmooze him, buy him lunc, drinksh and all that and at the end of it I won fuck all. His excuse; “It’s not really up to me.” So what’s the point of having him as a judge then?
On the richest man in the room, Jean Pigozzi, I remember turning up for a meeting with Saatchi and the bods in some hotel meeting room and being in casual when everyone else was in suits and feeling a bit silly. Then Pigozzi turned up as casual as I was and I thought, that’s it, I’m with the richest man in the room.
As for I got a bit drunk – how would anyone know?