Colourful Clients

A clash in the meeting rooms this morning.

LL, who’s a shit, had a client from the music business in, and he was under the impression that he’d booked the best room. It has a couple of old masters and some very fine walnut furniture, which younger clients are surprisingly taken by. Actually, I’d booked the room (though LL still disputes this) for a meeting with one of my clients, also in the music business.

Huge mess when LL walks in with his client, dressed tastefully in chocolate gabardine and a hundredweight of silver and gold, only to encounter my client, dressed just as tastefully in all-white nylon and a cream baseball cap.

Gabardine and Nylon do not see eye to eye, according to the tabloids. There were some indigestible words exchanged, a well-practised warm-up, and both gentlemen seemed to be enjoying the confrontation, until it dawned on them that this was no club or recording studio but a rather conservative financial institution, the likes of which they would never publicly admit to frequenting. For such clients we have underground parking and a secluded lift, so that no one need know the shameful fact that they are careful with their money. I gather certain brothels have the same arrangements.

Unfortunately for Gabardine and Nylon, they had inadvertently caught each other in flagrante. My client's full portfolio was spread out on the table, and until the interruption he’d been making not a bad fist of understanding the little graphs and pie charts we like to knock up. Nice chap, Nylon, although he turned livid when he realized there was a witness to his financial prudence, especially one who, in his words, had ---ed his momma with a spanner on the piano (this sounded rather more rhythmic and fiery than it’s coming across here).

I tried to point out that both clients were in the same position, and therefore a pact of silence might be invoked, but neither was content with that. LL kept an icy silence as he steered his client out, throwing me a venomous look when neither client was looking.

I’m going to have to give Nylon a fee holiday, I fear.