Not the ideal way to spend Christmas Eve

I was asked recently, while playing one of those silly board games after a couple of glasses of very drinkable Rioja, to describe the most embarrassing situation I've ever found myself in. I imagine we could all dredge up something from the past, but in my case, there were only two incidents that immediately sprung to mind.

The first was when I took a summer holiday job while at school as the mail-room assistant in a fairly stuffy firm of solicitors off Fleet Street. On my first day, having delivered mail to all the senior partners, I distinctly remember, to my embarrassment, hastily making an exit through a rather large broom cupboard. This was probably the funniest thing that those solicitors had ever witnessed, judging from the guffaws and bursts of uncontrollable laughter that ensued. To be the focus of attention for all the wrong reasons feels utterly humiliating if you're a spotty adolescent with very little self-confidence. It was, I have to admit, a horribly embarrassing experience.

But possibly less embarrassing though far more surreal, was the Guy Norris Christmas Eve episode, which took place the following year. Guy Norris was the name of a record shop I used to frequent in Gants Hill where I lived as a teenager with my parents. Unlike most kids who were into The Stranglers or Sex Pistols, I was into Joseph Haydn, and had set myself the hair-brained mission to collect every one of his 106 symphonies on vinyl. And it was over one particular Christmas Eve that I found myself riffling through the record shop's entire collection of classical music in search of the maestro’s early works - a search that turned up very little. So disappointedly, I trudged to the entrance and pulled the door, and in the process nearly yanked my arm off. The door wouldn't budge for good reason; it had been locked and the lights had been left on, along with the Christmas tree lights which twinkled away merrily.

When you are 15 years of age and locked in a record shop on Christmas Eve, you are faced with a difficult dilemma: do you knock manically on the glass window to attract the passers-by who may just think you're part of a rather novel Christmas display, or do you spare yourself the embarrassment and just sit it out until New Year? It was a tough one, but thankfully, I was saved by a third option in the form of a telephone, which sat on the counter.

Having spoken to my father, who then spoke to the police, who then spoke to the manager, who then went in search of the caretaker who was no doubt in his local boozer knocking back a pre-Christmas pint, it took another three hours before I was released from my temporary prison.

Funnily enough, I didn't listen to much Haydn after that.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

A peculiar kind of brand loyalty

We advertising copywriters are often accused of perverting what skills we have to merely flog a load of fairly dodgy merchandise that nobody in their right mind would ever consider parting money for. To some extent I suppose there is a grain of truth here. I have, in my time, had the dubious pleasure of writing ads for real stinkers. I won't name names but suffice it to say that I have written for at least one truly appalling motor car, more than one disastrous investment fund, a pretty horrid soft drink, a particularly unpleasant lager, a fairly unreliable brand of boiler, a telecoms company whose wireless routers are utterly hopeless... I could go on.

But the sad truth is that it isn't just members of the unsuspecting public who have the wool pulled over their eyes. You see, before any copywriter worth his salt can embark on the task of creating an idea and putting pen to paper, or indeed, fingers to keyboard, he has to immerse himself in the world of his client's. This invariably means visiting factories, warehouses or call centres, and experiencing the brand first hand. And, of course, to write convincingly and passionately about anything, whether it be a boiled sweet or a dirty lump of coal, a copywriter has to embrace it wholeheartedly and have utmost faith and confidence in it.

In my case, this has meant buying into the product quite literally. So I can now confess that I too have been gullible enough to believe my own advertising, and for years, have put up with investments that have gone nowhere other than downwards, temperamental cars that have decided to stop working on the North Circular, boilers that have quite literally blown up, and theme parks that, well, even my kids wouldn’t touch with the longest of barge poles.

So the next time someone infers at a dinner party or social gathering that those employed in the shady world of marketing are no better than brainwashers employed by the Moonies, I shall have to point out that some of the world’s biggest victims of advertising, aren’t members of the public, but the poor sods who write the ads in the first place.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds