‘You need publicity,’ my friend Simon Cox said to me firmly. It was a Tuesday, the kids were in school, and he was over to discuss business. He was a client now, as well as a close pal of mine, and once we were done discussing e-commerce solutions for his company, I’d showed him the new 50 List website I’d created – my pet project once the kids had gone back to school.
I’d also by now set up a JustGiving account. My mentioning the list on Facebook had brought a flurry of enquiries from friends wanting to know where and how they could make donations – and, more importantly, who I wanted to have them. So it made sense to make things official by putting that information on the website too, explaining that anyone who felt inspired to could donate direct to CMT United Kingdom, the charity that was the first port of call for people with CMT, myself obviously very much included. The money would then be split equally between ongoing research and supporting youngsters, like Ellie, with the condition.
I’d set myself a pretty ambitious target as well – to raise £5,000.
‘I know,’ I said to Simon. ‘It’s a lot to aim for, isn’t it?’
‘Which is why you need to get it out there,’ he said. ‘Fire people’s imaginations about it. Give them a chance to get involved. Local businesses even, maybe. It’s the sort of thing the local papers will jump on too, believe me. That might lead to sponsorship – financial help and so on.’ He pointed to some of the more outlandish challenges I’d set myself. ‘Which, by the look of this, you’re really going to need.’
Perhaps because I’d always thought I’d fund the list myself, it had never occurred to me to involve the local papers in what I was doing. I said so.
‘Are you mad?’ Simon laughed. ‘It’s January, remember – nothing doing. They’ll be all over this, trust me. Take a look out of the window. I reckon they’ll leap on any story they can lay their hands on right now that doesn’t need to include the word “snow”.’
I did as instructed and agreed he was probably right. I’d leap on anything that didn’t involve snow at the moment. Much as I didn’t want to be a grump and a killjoy, snow and wheelchairs were incompatible: that was a fact of life.
‘Seriously,’ he went on, ‘they’ll be all over this anytime. Tell you what. I have a friend who knows a journalist down at the Herald and Post. Let me have a word with her. See if she can get him to do a piece on it. Spread the word a bit for you. How about that?’
‘You think?’ I said. ‘You really think he’ll be that interested in all this?’
Simon grinned. ‘Nige, mate, you really don’t know what you’ve got here, do you? Just you wait and see, mate. Just you wait.’
And it wasn’t a very long wait. It was around 24 hours, give or take – no more than that – before a journalist from the Herald and Post was indeed on the phone wanting to talk to me and, having asked me a few questions about what I was up to, wanting to know when he could send their photographer round and get some pictures of both me and, he hoped, Ellie.
She was typically bemused at the prospect of being in the paper.
‘But why?’ she kept asking on the morning of the shoot. ‘Shoot’ – in itself a heck of a concept to get my head around.
‘So that everyone can hear about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it,’ I explained to her. ‘To spread the word, and I hope raise money for CMT.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but why do they want a picture of me?’
‘Because you’re one of the main reasons Dad wants to do it,’ explained Lisa. She was brandishing a duster with an expression of mild fanaticism. She had been all morning. Where dust was concerned, she’d be taking no prisoners. There was no way her living room would be featured in the local paper looking anything less than squeaky clean and perfect. I wouldn’t have been surprised to be given a quick buff and polish myself. She’d already given the dog the once-over.
‘But you don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ I added quickly. Although I was doing this to inspire my youngest daughter, there was no way I was going to make her do something she didn’t want to do. So if she didn’t want to do it, then so be it. Ellie is feisty and self-possessed, but she is also quite shy. And the last thing I wanted was for any of this to make her stressed, or for her to feel that she was being pushed into the limelight.
But she surprised me. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind. It might be cool.’ Then she hurried off upstairs to get changed into her favourite Minnie Mouse T-shirt.
Then, as they probably became sick and tired of saying in the papers that particular winter, the whole thing, to our amazement, snowballed. The piece appeared in the paper the next day – it even had its own front-page intro – and the phone, as a consequence, began ringing.
First it was a news agency, SWNS, who expressed great enthusiasm for handling my ‘story’, which was something I’d never even thought of it as. It was a project, my project, that was all. But they disagreed. It was very much a story, they told me, and one they were keen to put out to the nationals, to see what they might make of it, too.
So they did, and they came back to me the following morning to tell me that it had also now been published in Metro, the Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph. Not huge pieces – only a few column inches in most cases – but I was flabbergasted, as was Lisa, and all the kids.
The days that followed were no less surreal. In fact, they rank among the craziest and most overwhelming I’ve ever experienced.
Next came the calls from various radio stations. Would I be prepared to talk about The 50 List on air? Absolutely.
Then magazines. Would I be prepared to do interviews with them? Naturally. Then TV – 5 News, to be precise. Would I be prepared to travel down to London to be on their programme and tell the world how the idea of The 50 List had come about?
By now the phone was ringing almost constantly. No sooner had I hung up on yet another enthused researcher, and gone into the kitchen to give Lisa the latest update, than – brinngg brinnggg! – straight away it rang again.
‘Can you believe this?’ I asked Lisa every time it started up again. ‘So this is what 15 minutes of fame feels like, is it?’ I’d never dealt with anything quite so manic in my life.
Happily, the news agency stepped in to help us out, and became the contact to whom I could direct all the callers. This left me and Lisa free to think about what we could and couldn’t do.
The reality was that going down to London, to Channel 5, would be something of a mission. It would mean an incredibly early start and a complex journey via public transport; and both the prospect and the expense were a bit daunting. But it would potentially be a brilliant way to help my cause – and, I hoped, help me reach my fundraising target. Should I go?
I was still dithering when the email came in this morning – the email that topped them all. The big one.
Hi Nigel,
I’m a director working for The One Show at the BBC. I read an article about you and your daughter Eleanor in today’s Metro. I was sorry to read about your daughter’s diagnosis but it sounds like you are doing something really amazing to inspire her.
I wondered if I might be able to find out more about your challenges with the view of possibly helping you set up and complete some of them and film a piece about it for The One Show? If this sounds like something you might be interested in please feel free to get in touch. I’ll be happy to answer any questions and we can discuss what is possible and what is not.
Thanks for your time and hope to hear from you soon.
Best,
Karolina
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