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I looked out across my award-winning, hard-hitting news team and posed a question to myself, as is the wont of an award-winning, hard-hitting editor of an evening newspaper which has won awards.
“I wonder,” I thought to myself as I caught my reflection in one of many trophies my paper has won, “which member of my award-winning team I should send to meet the secretive, genial, stylish, driven, charismatic, hungry, suave, sharp, talkative multi-millionaire magnate who now owns Ipswich Town Football Club?”
“More to the point,” I mused, my brilliant mind flitting from one award-winning reporter to another, “who isn’t working on another huge exclusive and can therefore be spared for an all-day jolly to London?”
The answer was quite literally staring me in the face.
It was me, Nigel Pickover, editor of the award-winning, hard-hitting Ipswich Evening Star. I alone could capture the spirit of the enigma that is Marcus Evans or ‘The Big M’ as I decided he’d probably love me to call him.
“Like The Big M, I will not take any prisoners in my quest to describe the spring-time blossom or frothing pints of Greene King IPA quaffed by happy locals in a village pub,” I thought.
“The people of Ipswich are hungry to know more about this mysterious, wonderful, gorgeous man who hopes to take our boys, by which I mean Ipswich Town Football Club, into top flight football, by which I mean the Premiership.”
It was to be one of the few times I used quotation marks in my in-depth, challenging and agenda-setting sports feature.
I have won enough awards in this business to know that describing what someone said to me, Nigel Pickover, is far more powerful than quoting their actual words.
In London, I gazed appreciatively at the gleaming Edwardian white-stone splendour of The Big M’s office and immediately decided to make a clever reference to The Apprentice in my article. It’s this kind of dogged, determined attention to detail that has ensured my newspaper has won far more than its fair share of awards.
By now I was aching to spend some quality time with Marcus – perhaps it was the white-stone splendour of the building, the frothing pints or the spring-time blossom, but I was beginning to feel quite giddy: I hadn’t felt this excited since I saw the Star’s weekly website traffic figures when Steve Wright knocked off the fifth lady of the night.
Because we were running on Marcus Time and I was slightly early, I found myself soaking up the ambiance and mentally stockpiling enough details to ensure that the main thrust of my article wouldn’t appear until two paragraphs from the end.
Then, just as I was beginning to list the contents of the stationery cupboard for a sidebar, a sleek secretary might have, but didn’t, say: “Marcus will see you now”, you know, like on The Apprentice. How I chortled – we like to have a laugh on the Evening Star; it’s not all exclusives and hard-hitting campaigns (although it mainly is).
As with all wonderful meals, one is first seduced by the entrée, which in this case came in the form of ME Group financial wizard Martin Pitcher who is 40, but could easily pass for 25 in the dark, if you squinted a bit.
‘He’s a bright young thing with boyish good looks and good humour,” I thought to myself, “I might even do him the grace of giving him the only proper quote in the entire story.” And so I did.
“Hello,” said Martin. I very much liked what I saw.
My incredible story – and it is my story as much as it is The Big M’s – began last October when my award-winning title showed its credentials as Britain’s Best Evening Newspaper in Ipswich by exclusively breaking a story which all the big boys had been after: the name of the new ITFC boss.
Radio Suffolk and Ipswich Community Radio were left reeling after we revealed the identity of Marcus, and The Big M himself appeared to appreciate the way the Star had handled the issue, a fact he demonstrated by not giving us an interview for six months.
For half a year, Marcus was a shadow, an enigma, a man of mystery – a bit like the hero in a Jane Austen novel, although quite a lot harder, probably a bit like Alan Sugar from The Apprentice on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer.
I wrote him open letters on the front page of my newspaper, he sent me Christmas cards by special delivery. We were having so much fun that it wasn’t until April that I remembered we’d forgotten to ask him for an interview – how I chortled.
But I digress, although I have been in this business long enough to know that by now you’re hanging on my every well-crafted word.
Finally, I am meeting the man, the legend, the shadow. More to the point, I am shaking hands with him and noticing that he’s wearing a well-cut navy suit, has a large, but not ostentatious, office and drinks breakfast tea. It’s just one of the many benefits of being an award-winning, trained observer.
It quickly became clear that Marcus had been waiting to tell his story to someone he trusted and respected; to be exact, he had been waiting for six months, or until we asked him for an interview which he instantly agreed to.
I knew very quickly that I was going to be able to do business with this man who has shelled out a chunk of his firm’s money to buy ITFC, this man who wears well-cut suits, this man who is to information what blotting paper is to ink. That metaphor was, I thought as I noticed Marcus’ discreet but obviously Times-Rich-List expensive cufflinks, one of my best ever.
When it came to my turn to talk, The Big M took it all in, every scrap of information and every nuance that my words offered: at one point, early on, he even closed his eyes to ensure he could offer his complete concentration.
Like a wise man realising he’s being taught, I thought, metaphors crowding my mind, like frothing pints of Greene King IPA on a table at a village pub frequented by happy, quaffing locals.
As an aside, a digression, a diversion from the in-depth interview at hand, don’t get the impression that I was star-struck, over-awed and preparing to head back to Ipswich to write a fawning, sycophantic love letter to this sharp-suited, big office owning multi-millionaire.
Oh no. I asked the big questions and I received some big answers which I, the editor of an award-winning newspaper which is the throbbing heart of a community, have paraphrased in my own words for you, the readers.
“So why, Marcus,” I asked, realising with a jolt that the Evening Star’s cardboard cutout of our publicity-shy magnificent magnate was by no means burly, masculine or imposing enough to do this Adonis of a man justice, “are you trying to keep your face out of the papers?”
He answered me, and I noted that answer. It was a good answer, the kind that Alan Sugar might have given, although a bit different, because Alan Sugar never pretended that he didn’t have anything to do with Spurs.
There were other questions, probing questions about that multi-million pound shirt sponsorship and those arms deals and I thought hard about asking them, as hard and as long as befits the proud owner of a bursting trophy cabinet (to be precise, as we always are in the Star, cabinets plural).
Seconds before I left – my exclusive firmly under my belt along with several cups of breakfast tea – I once again caught a glimpse of my reflection, this time in the totally non-ostentatious solid gold water dispenser in Marcus’ office, and realised that The Big M and I were cut from the same wonderfully suave cloth.
Brilliant, successful, forward-thinking and modest, I am better than Marcus in but one, small way: I do not and will never fear relentless self-publicism.
I looked at my reflection again. And I very much liked what I saw.
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