M&A Activity

Hello readers,

There’s been a few things happening at work which have stimulated my panic gland. It looks like my company is about to be aggressively acquired by another company that works in a similar sphere. You don’t work in the cut and thrust of media sales for as long as I have without sensing when there’s likely to be a lot more cut than thrust.

What happens when there’s a merger? I’ll tell you what: people lose their jobs. And which people tend to go first? I’ll tell you which: the last ones in. And that’s me. Nobody has joined the company since me, apart from a Kiwi classified sales guy called Larson who’s two favourite things in the world are downhill mountain biking and MDMA. And I don’t think he’s going to get made redundant, because I expect he’ll get the sack before any merger takes place. The other day he was found sleeping off a night on the pills under someone’s desk.

Anyway, as you know, I’ve been through the redundancy wringer and I don’t much fancy going through it again just yet. Not least because I haven’t worked here long enough to qualify for a payout. Anyway, we’ve got a meeting about it on Thursday, when we’re going to be given more details. Dan’s shitting himself because he reckons it’s always the middle management that gets it. He’s been doing double-length workouts at the gym and having extra body building shakes because he says appearance is important for first impressions.

He's been doing press ups like mad and the other day I came home and he was doing press ups with a pair of my boxer shorts under his face. I asked what the hell he was doing and he asked me if I'd seen Police Academy. Of course I've seen it, I said, it's one of the seminal films of my generation. Anyway, he said did I remember the bit where Mahoney was being made to do press ups and the two bad guys put their sweaty socks under his nose to help him do the press ups because he didn't want to have his face in their socks. I said I thought I did. He said that's what he was doing - that he couldn't think of anything more unpleasant than my pants and they were helping him do press ups. He's weird.

Anyway, while we’re on the topic of unwanted mergers, Mum and Roger are coming down to London at the end of next week, which means its time for me to kick Operation Sword of Truth up a gear. I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve (literally!). But you’ll have to wait to hear about those.

Apparently they’re coming down to London to go to two theatre plays. I think Roger will be doing some research for his local branch of the BNP because he has chosen racially themed stuff. The first one is an all-black production of something called Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I think it’s a musical. Anyway, when I say all-black, I don’t of course mean that the cast is the New Zealand rugby team!! Lol!! No, what I mean is that all of the actors are black. Most exciting of all about this brilliantly diverse bit of arts is that it’s got Darth Vader in it!!

Now I’m not talking about the Green Cross Code man Dave Prowse, who was the man in the actual Darth Vader costume in the three Star Wars films (needless to say I do not even recognise the three prequels). After all, he was white. No, I mean James Earl Jones, the guy who provided the voice. It’s an interesting question about the nature of performance, I suppose. While Prowse did all the striding about, pointing and hurting people – which, I concede, contributed menace to the character – it was Jones who really made Vader so iconic, with that voice.

I for one think it’s sad that someone who created so memorable a character has fallen on such hard times that he’s got to do theatre; and a musical to boot! And he was in Coming to America. It’s a tragedy.

The other play is Shakespeare’s Othello, starring Mr Delbert Wilkins himself: Lenny Henry. Mum said that Roger told her Henry had recently won a theatre prize as best newcomer for his role in Othello, which strikes me as a bit rich given he’s 50-odd and he’s been famous for years, and married to Dawn French. I’ve got nothing against Dawn French but, shitting Christ, the Vicar of Dibley is a load of old monkey spunk, isn’t it?

Obviously I’m going to use this visit to London to try and get underneath Roger’s veneer of respectability. Which means I may have to say things that aren’t all that politically correct. But I just want to say here and now that I think it’s great that they’ve rewritten a Shakespeare play – one of the classics – to accommodate a black actor like Lenny. It’s about time!

I wonder if he goes off-piste and chucks a bit of Theophilus P Wildebeest into the mix – guaranteed crowd pleaser that one. Or perhaps that African chap he used to do. As I understand it, Othello isn’t one of the comedies, so it could probably use a bit of lightening up.

Katanga my friends!

ND Out.