A TV documentary a couple of weeks back during BBC4’s “Italian Opera” series, taken together with a TV interview during this year's election campaign, reminded me of the importance of the principle of “noblesse oblige”, even when applied to the aristocracy of the media world.
The recent documentary was about Luciano Pavarotti. I will declare an interest in that I once saw him live, nearly 20 years ago at Covent Garden. True, he was said to be past his electrifying best even then. True, he was in “Un Ballo in Maschera” (my favourite opera ever since), where the standout male aria is given to the baritone rather than the tenor. True, his handlers spirited him out of a back door to avoid us autograph-hunters on a cold February evening. Despite all that, we all knew that we were in the presence of greatness. Anyway, back to the TV documentary. (Not before time, I hear you cry). A procession of notables from the musical world had extolled Pavarotti’s virtues, not only as one of the pre-eminentvoices of his or any other generation but also as probably the most successful populariser of opera. Then up came the face of Jeremy Paxman with a recording of an interview he’d done with the larger-than-life tenor, only a few years before the latter’s death. In answer to a question about when he’d retire, Pavo said that he’d sing for as long as his voice held out. He clearly didn’t believe in retirement, for which I applaud him. Then Paxman, with his trademark sneer, said, “Some people think you should have given up years ago.” To which Pavarotti, with more grace than his interviewer, replied, “Some people are probably right.” A smack in the mouth would have been an alternative response and could have been forgiven.
Journalists are paid to expose the truth from dissembling politicians and, less usefully, to puncture pomposity in celebs of all kinds. Pomposity that I hadn’t observed on the part of this rightfully celebrated guest, by the way. If the public still wanted to hear that voice, even past its best, and the singer wanted to oblige, then who was Paxo to imply that both parties should be denied their respective pleasures? This short but unpleasant interlude reminded me that it’s possible to behave like an ignorant lout, despite having the benefits of a fine mind and fine education; possible but unforgivable.
All of which led to an unconnected but satisfying episode during the election campaign. Paxman on that occasion introduced his guest as follows: “Eurfyl ap Gwilym is Chief Executive of the Principality Building Society. In that exalted position (did I detect more of the trademark Paxo sneer at this point?) he is Plaid Cymru’s economics adviser.” What followed was a delight, as the said adviser reduced Paxman to a splutter. He had contested one of Paxo’s assertions with some data, to which the interviewer responded, “I don’t have those figures in my head”.
“Well, you should have. Do your homework; you have the report there; look up the data.” Or words to that effect. At that point, to my surprise, (and maybe to his credit) Paxman did indeed start to shuffle through his papers, considerably discomfited. That discomfiture was not lost on the audience: the YouTube clip of the interview was apparently one of the most popular of the election campaign. Not the most important episode of that campaign, I know, but … hubris? Pride comes before etc? Both of the above.
An afterthought about that showing of “Old Age Pillagers” that I went to.
I've been discovering over the past couple of months that when acting for the camera, rather than on the stage, less is more. With "OAP" I had the extra challenge that, although my character was fairly central, he didn't say much. I’m not used to that, so I found it hard. Luckily I got lots of tips from the director (Violet Ryder; watch out for her) and from the guy I was playing against, Barrie Palmer. Barrie is a vastly more experienced actor than I; he passed on a tip from Anthony Hopkins, one of my favourite actors. If I remember it correctly, the advice was something like: “don’t act, just be, just think; the audience will see it in your eyes.” Nice work if you can do it; I've discovered it's not as easy as he makes out. I’m studying Hopkins.
I love that term, “portfolio working”, which is described as “a lifestyle in which the individual holds a number of jobs, clients and types of work”, all at the same time. For examples, look no further then the originator of the term, Charles Handy himself. The Irish economist and best-selling author began his career with Shell Petroleum (a background he shares with Vince Cable, though the latter spent rather more time there) and then the engineering group Charter Consolidated (now Charter International) before diversifying his activities and living the freelance life. He was subsequently co-founder and Professor of the LondonBusinessSchool but I feel sure those were for him part-time jobs.
He is quoted (www.scribd.com ) as saying, “I told my children when they were leaving education that they would be well advised to look for customers, not bosses.”
To gauge Handy's style these days, as a portfolio person, read the first few lines of his autobiography: "Some years ago I was helping my wife arrange an exhibit of her photographs when I was approached by a man who had been looking at the pictures. ‘I hear that Charles Handy is here,' he said. 'Indeed he is,' I replied, 'and I am he.' He looked at me rather dubiously for a moment, and then said, 'Are you sure?' It was, I told him, a good question because over time there had been many versions of Charles Handy.” He then adds, “… not all of which I was particularly proud”. That remark seems typical of the self-effacing nature of the man because, if there is such a thing as a philosopher of management and organisational behaviour, then it is he. Handy has been rated among ‘the Thinkers 50’, a list of the most influential living management thinkers in the world; in 2001 he was second on that list.
I myself discovered portfolio working relatively late. For most of my career I drew a salary working for organisations, ending up as MD of a chemical sales and marketing company which was a subsidiary of a large multinational group. Later I started a training business (but I’ll draw a veil over that for now, as its eventual failure led me into debt) and have since had a mix of mostly part-time jobs and freelance work. Nowadays, if people ask me what I do (the standard opening when meeting a stranger, at least in our British culture), I could reply, as Handy himself would recommend:“Well, that depends. I have a variety of activities. Would you like to hear about my writing? My acting and voiceover work? My radio presenting and after-dinner speaking?” Of course I don’t say that – it would be thought unforgivably “naff” here in Britain – but it would be a good conversation-stopper, if needed.
I wish I had discovered the portfolio way before. People have always been doing this – in fact many women who want or need to combine paid work and family have no choice but to do so at certain times in their lives – but the name, at least, is new.
More celebrated examples of portfolio people can be found, including Anthony Charles Lynton (aka Tony) Blair. Not so long ago he had what I think can accurately be described a “full-time job in an organisation”. To be precise, he was running a country with what was at the time the sixth-largest economy in the world. He decided a change would be good – it was about the time we were overtaken by Italy to become the seventh-largest economy but I am sure that was coincidental – and now he is doing so many different things I hesitate to list them for fear of being out of date. He looks as if he is enjoying the portfolio life too.
There’s another word for portfolio people nowadays: “scanners”. The man who is most associated with this term in the UK is John Williams, a classic example of someone who has gone from the corporate world to being a portfolio person. He used to be a senior consultant at the major accounting and consulting firm Deloittes but he now says that he focuses his time on “helping creative people figure out what they'd like to do with their life, how to make good money out of it and how to have some fun at the same time.”
Williams says of his life since making the switch that he has been “fortunate to achieve some remarkable things for someone so unfocussed and naturally lazy”. A nice mix of pride and self-deprecation.
He quit that job at Deloitte and has since “consulted independently for blue-chip organisations such as the BBC; turned a full-time job offer into a 3-day a week freelance gig that paid me the same income; cold-called The Guardian to win my first piece of paid writing, with no prior experience; and, over the past three years, have developed a meeting of a handful of people in a bar into the successful ‘Scanners Night’ event with up to 70 paid attendees. (www.scannercentral.co.uk )
‘There’s never been a better time — all the tools are there on the internet for you to get paid for what you enjoy. Previously, setting up a business needed premises, funding — but today you could set up your own eBay shop in an afternoon. You need to find the sweet spot between the things you love to do and doing them in a way that solves people’s problems for them — and there is your means of earning a living.’”
Williams concluded, according to The Times: “Now I have a portfolio career consisting of mentoring, corporate creativity workshops, copywriting, blogging ... I set my own hours, choose my own co-workers and alternate my place of work between my home, my garden and the local café.”
I got the impression that he prefers his new life to the corporate rat-race.
That student film "Old Age Pillagers" has now been finished and a week ago I went to a screening of all the graduate films of International Film School Wales. It was pretty scary seeing oneself on the big screen (in HD too) at Cineworld in Newport, but I thought that the team had put together a rather professional production.
Since then I've done another student film for a UWE project. Tomorrow I'll be having my first viewing of the finished product "Warm fuzzies, cold pricklies", which is being shown as an installation; also "One More Kiss Darling", which we shot in March: both as part of graduate week of the film studies department, at the Bower Ashton campus of UWE.
