and go through the usual pleasantries, Terry dying to ask what it’s all about but knowing Mal enjoys winding people up and will be direct enough when the time comes. Finally he grins at Terry and says simply ‘Everest, North side.’
It is as though Mal has casually lobbed a grenade into Terry’s world. When the dust clears, his heart and mind are racing. China … Tibet … Everest! The fantasies he’d been nursing in his imagination for years, never expecting them to come to anything. And now … He tries to attend to what Mal is saying. ‘Powerful team … Jon Tinker … Sandy … oxygen for the Pinnacles, Bonington …’
Account executive realism re-asserts itself: ‘Okay, that’s the carrot – what do you want from me?’
‘Fund raising. Help us find £80,000 and you come with us as Business Manager and a support climber.’
The possible approaches open up in Terry’s mind: who to talk to, covering letters, the ‘star’ points to put in front of sponsors, a punchy selling brochure … He dimly hears Mal continue ‘… part funding from a book contract … Andy’s agent …’ That’s good, we’ve got to be able to offer publicity. Try for a newspaper deal. TV is the important one. ‘How long do we have?’
‘Six weeks at the most.’
Strategy, credibility, deadlines and brinkmanship are Terry’s meat and drink and daily bread. They give him the same adrenalin as climbing, the hit that makes him feel alive. He walks back to the office in a blur of excitement, and for once finds it difficult to discipline his mind to his next appointment. A rock and ice climber of reasonable standard in Britain and the Alps, keen but definitely a weekend and holiday climber, now to be offered Everest! … He’ll have to find the right moment to talk it over with his wife Annie. How will she react? And she’d always wanted to go to Tibet …
Only a couple of miles away, Chris Watts was going through a very similar experience. Manager of the climbing section of Alpine Sports, where Jon sometimes worked, he’d been an early suggestion for the team. Chris knew very well that he’d been asked not just because of his climbing abilities and experience but also because he was in a perfect position to plan, organize and buy gear for the entire expedition at the best possible rates. He didn’t resent that, just acknowledged it in his level-headed way; to get on a trip like this, everyone would be expected to do something in return. It was worth it. The problem was going to be his wife Sonja. She would be, to put it mildly, pissed off. She was a very talented rock climber who had been largely responsible for Chris taking up climbing after he’d given up competitive cycling and was looking for a new outlet for his energies. Now it was he who was being given all the expedition opportunities. And he’d promised her after the Pakistan trip that on the next expedition they’d go together. Oh dear.
He pushed aside the problem of how to tell her and began methodically drawing up lists of clothing, tentage, climbing gear. He looks like a Rolling Stone in the early phases of dissipation, but at 27 he was manager of the largest outdoor-sports shop in Britain thanks to his sheer drive, coupled with an ordered mind, attention to detail, and absolute absorption with the technical aspects of every kind of equipment. One of nature’s technicians, he would be the Expedition’s Mr Fix-it. He read Bonington’s Unclimbed Ridge and considered the problems and requirements of the North-East Ridge. This gear is going to have to be state-of-the-art: the lightest and warmest and strongest that money can buy and contacts can secure …
I could see the doubt – are these lads serious or just jokers? – in my agent’s eyes when Mal and I went to see her. I didn’t blame her, I sometimes wondered myself. I had three chapters of a potential book about the Mustagh Tower expedition, but no contract for it; I hadn’t yet proven I could write and sell a climbing book, and here we were asking her to find a publisher for another one. All she knew about Malcolm was from my Mustagh letters. Not surprisingly, she hadn’t heard of any of the rest of the team. Mal pointed out why none of the few publicly known climbers were in the team; there was little of the ‘first division’ left, and someone had to come along and replace them. Okay, she’d do what she could, and that was the angle to take – a new generation of Himalayan climbers out to prove themselves. Make virtue out of necessity.
But she couldn’t go far in securing a book or newspaper contract until we definitely had the money to make the Expedition happen. And as Terry was reflecting, one is not likely to attract a sponsor without being able to offer them media coverage. Sponsors want something back for their money, and what they want is good publicity and good public relations.
So where to start? It’s a matter of confidence and credibility, of convincing certain people that you can do what you say you’ll do, that you are serious. Once the first person is committed – be it sponsor, newspaper, patron, publisher – the rest tend to follow. The problem is breaking into that magic circle. At the moment the North-East Ridge expedition existed largely in Mal’s imagination; he believed, he was absolutely convinced that we would make this Expedition happen, that we would go to Tibet in March and have a good chance of climbing the Unclimbed Ridge.
The offices of ITN News were round the corner from Terry’s office. He went there with an outline of the Expedition and found enthusiastic interest from ITN, who have a history of covering and supporting a variety of British adventures. They agreed in principle to buy film reports of the trip. That was the first step into the magic circle of media and money; now we could offer coverage, it was time to make a pitch for major financial backing.
The Expedition brochure Terry produced was a remarkable one, and should be essential reference material for any expedition seeking sponsorship. Terry posed the potential sponsor’s question ‘What’s in it for me?’ and answered it so persuasively and exhaustively that it had us practically reaching for our own cheque-books. And so he sent out the brightly baited hooks and we waited for a bite …
Chris Bonington makes an accute comment on sponsorship in his book Everest the Hard Way. Financial considerations alone don’t make a company decide to sponsor a project of this sort. The notion has to fire the imagination of a few key people – and then they sit down to try to justify it financially.
And so it was with David Wood, the Communications Manager of Pilkington Brothers, the world’s largest glass and glass-related products company. The last major route on Everest, a new young British team, Tibet, China … And it just happened that the company was rethinking its sponsorship strategy. He picked up the phone and talked to Terry: ‘We’re interested, please send us more information for a Board Meeting this Friday.’
Terry’s proposals went before the Board Meeting, and it happened that the Company Secretary was David Bricknell, a marathon-running outdoor enthusiast and armchair climber who noticed that Terry’s sponsorship proposals included the option for a sponsor’s representative going to Everest with the team …
‘David Wood here, Terry. If we can call it the Pilkington Everest Expedition, we’ll put up £80,000 and not a penny more.’
1Everest: the Unclimbed Ridge. Hodder & Stoughton, 1983
6TH NOVEMBER – 5TH MARCH ’85
‘You don’t crack an egg because you want to crack an egg …’
Now that Pilkington had thrown their hat in the ring the rest followed in swift succession. Hutchinson made an offer for the Mustagh Tower book, then one for Everest. The Sunday Express commissioned a series of reports. BBC radio wanted us to record
