Good old Nick. Nickster. Nicky. The Knickerman. Mr Nicktastic. Otherwise known as Mr Nick Daniel, deputy head of advertising sales at Asinine Media (a small outfit dedicated to the publication of dismal magazines and websites giving dismal financial advice to dismal, sad men in the dismal sad provinces).
But good old Nick is a laugh down the pub, isn’t he? One of the lads. Always up for a giggle. For the banter. The bants. Bants with the boys. Always the first to arrive. Always the last to leave. That’s our Nick. Hey, you remember that time we got thrown out the strip club because The Knickerman got up on stage and started grinding his 40-something ass up against the pole? Yeah. that was FUCKING HILARIOUS WASN’T IT? Mr NICKTASTIC IS A FUCKING LEGEND!!!
A fucking legend in his own alcohol-drenched lunchtime. It’s amazing any work ever gets done. Nick has a team (THE NICKS – BUNCH OF FUCKING WINNERS!) who all fucking love him, and who spend their days visiting the big London ad agencies trying to persuade them to part with their client’s shekels for a page or a half-page in SMALL BUSINESS ACCOUNTING – a mind-meltingly bland organ – next month.
Fucking legend, Nick . . . but getting on a bit. It’s not like back in 1997, when The Nickster, fresh out of uni, rocked up one morning in the office half-cut, only to get torn a new one by the fearsome, bearded and beady-eyed ‘Hitler’ Barry (the previous ad director). But Barry never held a grudge. They all loved Nick. Well, one of the lads, wasn’t he?
Tempus fugit. Things change. ‘Hitler’ Barry got made redundant years ago. Fucking internet, changing up the game. The board brought management consultants in, 22 year-old Oxbridge kids with skin like babies’ bottoms, not a day’s work experience in their lives except maybe doing the washing up that day Nanny was ill. And these snot-nosed, know-nothing kids sniff around for a minute and then carve the company up how they see fit. Time and time again.
We’ve got to be nimble, as the CEO said. We’ve got to move with the times.
Well, The Nickster moved with the times. Survived the culls. Good old Nick. They’re never gonna fire him, are they? Fucking top bloke. With his brightly coloured novelty socks blooming from the bottom of his black corduroys; his tweed jacket with ironic patches on the elbows; his regulation Ralph Lauren shirts. Plus those thick-rimmed glasses that make him look a bit like a Silicon Valley billionaire but without the suntan. Or the billions.
Fucking decent bloke, and a hit with the ladies, too, back in the early 2000s. Always porking someone – Soraya in Accounts. Nerdy Jane, the receptionist at LSD advertising. Needy Janine. And – memorably – busty, cockney, chirpy little Marie, ‘Hitler’ Barry’s PA of a decade or more: fuck me Nick, if old Barry finds out you’ll be toast! He won’t old chap. The Nickster’s like teflon – never gets caught.
All that changed in the summer of 2010, though, when old Nick did get caught – in love, and then marriage – with the lovely and long-suffering Debbie, seven years his senior, Newcastle Uni grad, a decent job in PR at a firm over in Clerkenwell. Lovely Debbie. Well, she puts up with me doesn’t she? Deserves a fucking medal for that, old Nick.
And then the wedding in Shropshire, a beautiful sun-drenched day, with Nick’s work team in attendance along with his somewhat diffident, rural family, and even old ‘Hitler’ Barry putting in an appearance at the party in the evening. Nick’s best man, Roger Doger the Rugger Bugger, made a memorable speech foregrounding that awfully embarrassing but funny-as-fuck time when Nick pulled a bird down at Infernos in Clapham then woke up with her the next morning only to discover that she had a little bit extra downstairs. Yep, the rugby lads pissed themselves at that one, didn’t they?, and who can blame them (although Debbie’s father didn’t look too impressed, but if you can’t have a laugh and a joke on your fucking wedding day then when can you for Christ’s sake?)
Ah, weren’t the wedding photos lovely, though? With Old Nickster mugging at the camera giving it the Jim Carrey rubber-face thing, and Debbie smiling ruefully but supportively beside him. She puts up with a lot, doesn’t she?
It was 2011 when the first of the kiddies arrived – Little Davey. It had been about time. They weren’t getting any younger, were they? Debbie, aged 38, had been pushing it in terms of the old fertility window, and if they were gonna do it it was now or never. And so good Old Nick obligingly stepped up to the plate. Sometimes you just gotta man up and go for it. Glad to hear it’s all still working down there, as Roger Dodger later observed.
Little Davey, followed a year laster by Little Daisy. Davey and Daisey. Smashers, both of them. Of course, they moved out of London. The Nickmeister sold his Stockwell basement flat (The Party Palace) and they bought a house out towards Haywards Heath. The commutes not bad. And of course, the schools around there are first rate, too . . . And that’s the main thing isn’t it?
2020 and now Nick’s 40 years old and still funny as fuck: just cos you settle down it doesn’t change who you are. That what you young-uns have to understand, as Nick tells Elle, who, at 22, is the youngest member of the team. Pretty, young, fresh. Just up from Cambridge. First job in media and all that. You have to look after them, don’t you? It’s your responsibility. There comes a point in your career when it’s . . . a duty.
Sex? Not so much these days. Well it always cools off, doesn’t it? To be expected. We’re not fucking teenagers any more. And the bugle doesn’t help. The old Colombian Marching Powder. Does any other substance known to man inflame desire while impeding performance with such perfect symmetry?
They’re in The Prince’s Head, the old boozer just across from the office. All the bar staff know Nick there. Well, of course they do – geezer’s a fucking legend. And he’s still the last to leave. Always. Family life is great and all that, but it doesn’t mean you compromise who you are.
The skin ‘s now not so fresh and clear as it was back in 2011. You get kind of . . . crumpled. But that’s nothing to worry about. Men age better anyway. You should have seen me when ‘Hitler’ Barry finally put his hand in his pocket after a particularly buoyant quarter, and took the whole office on a skiing trip to the Alps in 2001. The apres ski, the parties, the birds. Fuck me. I’m not saying I was a player, exactly, but, you know, I had it.
But things were different then, of course. That was before the commute. Two hours on the train, it takes, Elle. Sometimes I’m lucky if I catch the last one out of Victoria. After work drinks. You know how it is. A team that doesn’t drink together isn’t really a team, is it?
You’ve got to have a laugh. You’ve got to bond. And how we bond at Asinine Media is over a few bevies. You gotta show you can handle it. Have a laugh for crying out loud. Cos what’s life all about anyway if you can’t have a laugh? Mind you, there’s been a few times I’ve missed even the last train and I’ve had to stay at the Holiday Inn over in Paddington. Woken up in me clothes there. Only a couple of times mind. No, the wife doesn’t mind. She’s a sort, Debbie. The Debster. She puts the kids to bed, does all of that. Fucking legend.
Elle nods appreciatively. Her hair is blonde, in a bob, gleaming on her head. She’s wearing a dress that’s aiming for officious, even severe, but which is just a little too tight. Her knee, emerging from its slit, and then the bottom of her thigh. You can see the bottom of her thigh, bare, when she crosses her legs.
No, she seems like a good girl. A good sort. Eager to learn and all that. Some of them think just because they went to Oxbridge they know it all, but they don’t. Sales isn’t like that. It’s not something you pick up in a book. Now she’s nodding along, eager to please, and her lips part microscopically when Nick talks and they look moist and . . . plump.
Old Nick remembers other times when girls have looked at him like that, back at the ski lodge, back in the old, old, wild, wild days. You see the thing about birds is, they don’t make it obvious, do they? as Roger Dodger always used to say. They’re not gonna wear a sign on their head. You’ve gotta make a fucking move.
Yeah, she’s young enough to be your daughter. But in the IPA haze, boundaries seems malleable. We’re all animals in the end, aren’t we? Descended from chimps and bonobos. And have you seen what those fuckers get up to? Amazing the BBC gets away with showing it.
You could . . . could . . . extend your hand forward, just a little bit, and touch that delicious bare thigh. Well, what harm can it do? Yeah, you’re the boss, but fuck that . . . those are just labels. We’re all adults here. Human nature is stronger than job titles. Plus you’re Old Nick – the Nickster – fucking teflon. Nothing ever sticks. Debbie – well, what about Debbie? Far away, in the sexless semi with the smashers. What she won’t know won’t hurt her. And anyway, in some fundamental she’d understand. She knows about the birds and the bees. And only God can judge me.
‘It’s certainly been interesting, getting to see how everything works,’ Ella was saying, smiling prettily. ‘It’s early days. But Q1 is shaping up well, and if you work hard you could be seeing a decent chunk of bonus coming your way at the end of it’. And just like that, he does it. The fingers come to rest on the bottom of Elle’s bare thigh. The warmth of her skin – almost moist. Just a touch. And so very, very soft.
Christ I’m pissed.
Next there’s some sort of confusion. A high-pitched cry. Rapid movements, hard to interpret. A bar stool tips over. A crash as a glass smashes on the floor. Someone shouting. People standing, staring, and Dom, the landlord, leading him gently but firmly to the door.
Sorry Nick mate, he says. But you’re gonna have to go. You’re barred.
It’s never pleasant to wake up in a strange hotel when your phone’s run out of juice and you don’t know what time it is.
But it’s even worse when slowly, with unerring cruelty, the sounds and images of the night before start to impose themselves, flooding the cinema of the mind with awful, garish technicolour and sound.
Good old Nick.
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