Forty Years of 'Unsung Heroes': #2

There's lots of people on here (LinkedIn) with big reputations and big followings, but it's not just the big names that make working in my industry (advertising+) extraordinary, delightful, fun and honest.

As I get ready to hang up my agency boots. I thought I might share a few of my unsung heroes with you. And say thanks.

Today I want to turn my attention to the back office.

I want to tell you about Iris. Sadly departed, I attended her post-Covid funeral in July 2023 with a small band of industry stalwarts to say goodbye to a secret legend. Then a big bunch of us at 1576 had a memorial for her in a posh Edinburgh wine bar.

Iris was not one for the limelight. She just quietly got on with her job, impeccably filing accounts with never a mistake.

I worked with her twice. Once as a spotty faced youth, a trainee account executive at Hall Advertising, where she and her colleagues (Pat, Irene and Joyce) had a scary, to me, room to themselves in the bowels of the building: “Terror” or “Tiger” (take your pick) Townsley was the henchwoman, but in truth was more tabby than tiger, Joyce was the character but Iris and Pat Crandles were the pussycat dolls. I loved them all in different ways.

It was only when Iris joined me at 1576 to replace the irreplaceable Yvonne Fallows, another hidden gem of our industry, that I really got to know her. By now she was a Johnston, not a Christie, married to her beloved John - a true gentleman if ever there was one.

Iris and I met every single day, sometimes multiple times, in her wee coorie-in overlooking the back garden in Rutland Square. She ran the books like the money was her own, assiduously detailed, understanding the nuances of its movement, good or bad.

She was gentle but resolute. And we became great friends, albeit work pals. She would socialise occasionally, but she’d rather be home with John. But when she did infrequently step out with us she gave as good as anyone.

I’ll bet there’s a lot of great Iris’s in adland. Unspoken heroines. Oiling the wheels for the fat cats and, as my pal MP said yesterday, the pricks. But we couldn’t do it without our Iris’s (and Pats and Joyces and Irenes).

Bless you Iris. We couldn’t have done it without you.