If you kept heading East in the nineties & naughties you could enjoy a glittering career
Go too far & you’ll end up in filth; Failed in London, try Hong Kong
I never made it that far but I did make to Uzbekistan, Tashkent & further south to Bukhara, on the border of Afghanistan ... the trick was to stay ahead of technology. As media research spread the nerd birds flocked in & media changed from theoretical physics to pure maths
In London I was a grunt, in Warsaw I was gauche, in Moscow a guru ... & in Samarkand I was practically a God. There was no research in Uzbekistan. But I had a vision... television. With experience of buying TV in rapidly developing Poland & Russia I had a premonition of how to magically predict the numbers blindfolded
After Warsaw I was supposed to sail north to Y&R Stockholm to run Colgate across Scandinavia. I had some misgivings about this ... partly because Marlboro man Jim at Philip Morris had said “I don’t see it, you’re an emerging markets guy” But mainly because the Swedish chef I was supposed to cook up media recipes with thought Sean Connery was American
Luckily I was on maternity leave ... awaiting the arrival of my daughter. She was a couple of weeks late... a sign of the tardiness to come. So I was delaying my start date in Sweden
And then my friend Katarzyna McNally called; she’d originally inspired me to move East. She’d made the move from Chicago to Prague in the early 90s. Now she was headhunting for someone crazy enough to consider Russia . Did I know anyone?
“Yes... Me”
Russia has never had enjoyed a reputation as a fun destination. James Bond has never visited Moscow, only St Petersburg in Goldeneye & held prisoner in Azerbaijan by Sophie Marceau, la petit mort indeed. For media in 1998, compared with Moscow... Baghdad or Bogotá were considered a cushy post. Or as my boss in London drummed into me...
“I grew up in Africa & India ... & I wouldn’t go to fucking Moscow”
A famous TV presenter Kiselyov had been shot dead, possibly part of a dispute over the TV pricing, other leading foreign businessmen had been killed, most famously FORBES at the Radisson ... & Saatchi & Saatchi made headlines after visit from armed tax police. I made a joke about this later & a colleague who worked there responded sombrely
“Have you ever had a Kalashnikov pointed at your face?”
However I felt this this dangerous reputation held an advantage for me. Less competition
Moscow was famous as a posting for people who’d slept with people they shouldn’t have, or hadn’t slept with people they should have. I’d be surrounded by womanisers, alcoholics & gamblers ... & even people who liked to spend their cash unwisely. I’d fit right in
So in early April I found myself in snowy Moscow. There had been a freak Spring storm & the city looked white, bright & almost beautiful. God had carpeted the capital in fresh, fluffy snow... but my future employers weren’t rolling out a red carpet. Initiative Media were doing everything possible to dissuade me to sign up for a tour of duty.
I’d been picked up by a spiv in a zhighuili. Taken to the worst hotel in town. And treated to a cold breakfast alone in the cavernous Soviet dining room
I was loving it. How much worse could it get?
