Could anyone please put me in touch with John O’Donnell? I want to contact him about a project I’m working on.

Thanks very much, Julian

I won’t be there on the night, due to my attendance being required here in France while an Italian puts a new roof on our house here. So instead I’m going to run a series of pieces on my bollocks deconstructing site at http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/
Hopefully, there’ll be a few anecdotes you recognise, and the odd reason to smile.
Colletts taught me how to tell shit from putty: for this, I shall be eternally grateful.
Best
Wardy x (John Ward, planner, 1974-81)

In no particualr order: Dickie Dearing, Pete Cherry, Angela Bray, Rob Henderson, Graham Watson, Paul Hansen, Alec Wignall and apologies to any other that I’ve missed.

One of my memories is going to Ireland for Aer Lingus with Arthur Parsons and Alan Waldie. We arrived at Swansea for the ferry and Arthur produced, from a Gladstone bag, a bottle of Gin, mixers and glasses. We sat in his Ford Zephyr feeling like kings.

In Ireland Waldie chucked someone who got up his nose into the hotel swimming pool and gave away his jacket and contents to the hotel barman because he said he liked it. We had to retrieve it the next day, wallet and all.

We flew out to the Arran Islands in a tiny plane but beforehand discovered that Alan hated flying as he gunned down a great number of drinks in the hotel bar/waiting room in Galway City.

I could go on and on about that trip and the great experiences. Colin Milward took us and and John Salmon to task for allowing three of us out of the office for a month but said no more.

The bizarre thing was that the campaign never ran in England because of ‘The Troubles’ restarting but did run in France and they won an award for one of the ads but took the credit without a mention of the writer, him downunder.

Another tale involving Ireland was the shot for the ‘Silence is golden’ ad for B&H. Pete Cherry chose an American photographer who had a holiday home in the north of Ireland.

He took us from the airport to his home and took us to his “great location”, a lake at the bottom of his garden.

Not good enough for B&H.

We spent the next few days looking and finally found a better lake and later a rowing boat for the fishing gear. We finally got to shoot and the photographer turned up with only a 35mm camera. Steam was coming out of Pete Cherry’s ears (that’s ankle height to most). Pete had asked for a 10 x 8 Gadolfi. To add insult to injury a gang of the photographer’s friends turned up for the ‘crack’. I next remember Pete looking up at the towering photographer and sacking him. We had dinner with him that I night and I explained that there was the Atlantic’s width of difference in understanding what was required for a B&G shoot between us and him.

We then drove down to Killarney and the lakes with the freelance photographer assistant to try and get a shot to convince Colin that the excercise was worthwhile. We booked a dawn awakening at the hotel but awoke to no call at 9am. The front desk said we looked so tired thay gave us a lie in. To be fair Pete was so sick with nerves, he had drunk an entire bottle of Caoline (sp?)and Morphine and had slept the entire length of Ireland.
Anyway, we got the trial photo and Pete disappeared off to the Lake District with Bruce Brown. We didn’t hear a squeek for a week. Unbeknown to us it had poured with rain all week. The award-winning shot was taken on the very last day when the sun finally showed it’s face.

Great days.

Anyway, it’s in the high 20′s and I’m living the life of Mr Riley in Sydney’s northern beaches . Have a sup on me.

Mike Doyle, a child of the 70′s.