As befits a record label boss about town, I've arranged to meet a man who is interested in making a film about Big Bertha Records. Our rendez-vous is scheduled for Bar Italia, the Soho institution which has given unemployed actors, writers and artists the chance to sit and watch the girls go by in the guise of work since 1949.
Since the Big Bertha project began back in January there have been quite a few phone calls and meetings from production companies and directors keen on making a documentary on what it's like to start up a record company, and I've said yes to every single one because I know that I'll never hear from any of them ever again. The current prospective DA Pennebaker is unlikely to turn up and turn the Big Bertha story into a classic rockumentary, but it won't do any harm to have a chat over a coffee in Bar Italia in the pretence that he or she will.
This filmmaker has, up to this point, proven more promising than most. He knows the music industry inside out, has worked with everyone from Pink Floyd to Cathy Dennis, and has a reputation for making things happen. His method is to be so optimistic about his latest project getting off the ground that, generally, it actually does. I have met him once before and found him to be genial and charismatic, so it comes as something of a surprise when he appears slightly reticent as I bound up to him outside Bar Italia, shake his hand, and tell him that we have a lot to talk about.
"I'll just grab a coffee and leave my coat here if that's OK," I tell him, thinking that something doesn't seem quite right.
"How have you been? I haven't seen you for years," he says, which is odd considering we only met for the first time a month ago. But presumably filmmakers do have a different sense of time because they spend their lives shooting all day for three-minute segments.
"How's The Idler doing?" says the filmmaker when I sit down with a coffee. The Idler is my brother's magazine. I tell him it's doing fine but we should talk about the matter in hand, which is the plans he has for a film. None for the time being, he replies. But what about the proposed documentary on Big Bertha Records, I ask?
He gives me a sideways glance and asks: "Is your name Tom Hodgkinson?"
"No, it's Will, his brother. You aren't the guy who called me about making a film on the record company, are you?"
"No. I'm Suggs."
"From Madness?"
"Yes."
The fact that I managed to confuse a filmmaker I had recently met with a pop star who was something of a hero to kids of my generation is quite worrying, but the fact that said pop star took it in his stride as someone he had never met before invited himself to sit down at his table is heartening. It turns out that my brother had interviewed Suggs about five years previously, and so it was a case of mistaken identity on both sides. My filmmaker did turn up in the end. Needless to say, Big Bertha Records: The Movie is yet to go into production.
