Wow! It's just like the media business course again. But in Bournemouth 30 years ago!
When I first joined RSA in 1977 I was told to watch out for a huge fella who "looked like Hoss out of bonanza". (that's b.f.g. For you youngsters!)
Well a couple of possible candidates swung into view but I wasn't unduly impressed ...and then suddenly it all went dark as this bfg strode in, all of 6 foot 4 and seemingly 4 foot wide of him.
That'll be big Pete I rightly surmised as I took his huge outstretched hand and that was the start of a long and enduring friendship that spanned four decades. And I became little Pete of course.
Big Pete and little Pete. Or the two Peter hyphen hyphens.
Over those early months I learned a lot about the big fella - his lovely child bride Sheila and first Edward and then Adam of course. And his love of rugby (he would often turn up with a neat row of stud marks up his face after the weekend).
He was very proud of his parents who ran a thriving country pub in Redford and his parents in law too who always seemed to be jetting off somewhere exotic on Concorde.
Back to Rank screen advertising, I don't remember much of a formal induction but he did show me how to fill in an expense form & then later took me on an exhaustive tour of Soho's many bars and restaurants of which he clearly had an intimate knowledge.
Back in the late 1970's, cinema in the UK was in freefall and demand for cinema advertising was much the same so a generous expense account was pretty vital.
Indeed the phones rarely rang. Most of the reel was packed with fags, booze and denim but then, with the release of Star Wars in 1978 the following year, things suddenly changed.
Pete had created film packages and a whole new raft of advertisers came on board.
His forte was clearly as a salesman and his obvious passion for the big screen was evident to one and all. He was the only person to eventually become MD of both of the two cinema advertising sales houses and he helped put in place many of the building blocks that laid the foundations for the big screen cinema advertising revival today.
He was also a bit of a social chameleon - one minute he'd be from saff London and then he'd sound all posh private school. However he would also admit to being a bit of a token northerner having spent his early years in Bramhall in Cheshire - and delighted in saying stuff like pass the budder!
Unlike his father and now of course Adam, he did not spend time serving in Afghanistan but he did serve with the local TA in Bromley - terrorising the locals down Beckenham High St driving a Daimler dingo scout car! And if you ever drove with Pete in London traffic he was certainly not one to cut up!
In some respects I'm eternally grateful that Peter didn't choose the armed forces as his vocation - he was a tad right wing and his stock answer to most foreign office issues was "just bomb their [expletive deleted] villages".
Although a true patriot he loved French dining and his trips to Cannes but when it came to the French themselves. Well he never quite got over De Gaulle saying non to the UK's entry to the common market after all our wartime support.
Years later when P & D were bought by the French for 10 franks oh the joy when he personally set the door entry code for the office to 1805 - not a vintage year for the French navy of course!
He was not mean spirited though, as he'd regularly slide money to a big issue vendor (though rarely taking the magazine) because he thought "at least the bloke was polite & making an effort".
I also remember how angry he was when the ITV refused to show a charity commercial produced by Bartle Bogle & Hegarty highlighting John Mcarthy's hostage plight in Lebanon.
He ran it free for a month in over 1,000 screens.
Peter was much lauded as an especially generous and entertaining host and often, with Sheilagh by his side too, a frequent regular at Langans of course - lunchtime or evening and yes, sometimes both!
I remember one lunchtime we'd despatched the client and were just ordering another fine bottle of Sancerre for "a post lunch debrief" when he spotted the Who's Roger Daltrey sitting on a nearby table. Despite my feeble protests, he launched himself over to his idol's table and after the usual half smile and acknowledgement celebs often wearily reserve for fans, suddenly a chair was pulled out and a generous glass poured for Pete.
It later turned out that the mere mention that Pete had seen Roger performing with the rest of the who as "the high numbers" (in their early years) clearly had Daltrey totally engrossed as they were then too drugged/drunk to recall much from this vintage formative period.
(Pete of course loved rock music and the stones were the greatest band in his view - but he was by far the worst one chord air guitarist I've ever seen!)
Another favourite watering hole was Shampers Wine Bar which he used continuously over 4 decades. Always packed it was a marvel how he could slip in and out of such a crowded bar area without ever barging into anyone. He truly was a gentle giant.
It seemed entirely fitting that a gaggle of his old chums gathered pretty spontaneously at Shampers the week following Peter's untimely passing and we toasted his memory in some style.
He often said "life is not a [expletive deleted] rehearsal" and he truly lived by that mantra squeezing more than a quart into a pint pot.
We his friends and colleagues (and Pete's own family of course) naturally feel a bit cheated by his untimely passing but he certainly lived a very rich and fulfilling life and spread a lot of joy & happiness.
I'm now just going to squeeze in a brief quote from Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" as I think Pete would have appreciated the sentiments here:-
the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight go pop and everybody goes 'awww!'
Well I was going to finish in true cinema style with one of our fabled P & D local commercials but, as the bulb just went pop, I'm afraid it's now just the script!
"for a fine selection of beers, wines & spirits why not go to the press bar! The press bar you say? Yyyyyy ...yes, that's right, the press bar where a warm welcome awaits you ........and just 500 yards along from this church"
It's a wrap!
Organist plays out P & D sonic ends.
