Johnny Hornby on WPP succession, City AM’s Christian May gets his girl and kickstarting Jacquie Lawrence’s drama
• A strange future is sketched by a Secrets of My Success piece in the London Evening Standard by Johnny Hornby – founder of The & Partnership, a marketing group 49% owned by Martin Sorrell’s WPP – who after bluntly setting out his domestic priorities (“I have five children and five horses, and the horses are slightly more important than the children”) addresses the crucial issue of his status as one of the leading contenders to succeed the spry but senior Sorrell: “that’s a race that won’t happen,” the former Labour party election adman firmly insists, “and if it does, it probably won’t be for another 15 years”. So he envisages Sorrell stepping down, if at all, in 2031 when he’s 86, a year older than Rupert Murdoch is now; by which time, Monkey very roughly estimates (extrapolating from recent increases), the miniature marketing colossus’s total annual pay package should be around £285m.
• How many lesbians have been killed on screen in primetime shows this year? Monkey can tell you it’s 12. Not many, you might think, but with only 35 lesbian characters on peaktime shows in the UK and US last year that’s quite a high number. Monkey knows this because former Channel 4 commissioner Jacqui Lawrence reveals the statistic in her pitch to crowdfund £50,000 on Indiegogo to get a screen adaptation of her novel Different For Girls into production. A number of actors have confirmed or expressed interest in being in it including Rachel Shelley from Grantchester and The L Word, Blue Peter and Doctor Who star Janet Ellis, Death in Paradise’s Nimmy March and Emmerdale’s Charlie Hardwick. “It’s easy to be glib about this but in reality the constant ‘disposal’ of lesbian characters has an acute impact on younger viewers who are struggling with their sexuality. Television is literally getting away with murder,” says Lawrence. “Different for Girls is here to save the fate of fictional lesbians. You can rest assured that no lesbian will be killed or harmed during its making.” Not unless one of them dies due to different kinds of L Words, she says, namely, “too much love, lust and laughter”.
Continue reading...from Advertising | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1WTxE9N
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment