Better to regret something you have done rather than something you haven’t? Not always. In 2000, digital was not the behemoth industry it is now. Back then, the concept was opening just a crack: we were sceptical, unsure, bemused.
Drunk on the lure of futurism, many digital companies were, on reflection, running before they could walk. In an ill-advised wrong turn, I left a promising job in the music industry to join the steeplechase.
Working in A&R (scouting new musical talent) was life-giving, which is why I was as surprised as anyone to be drawn to an interactive film company; the first of its kind. The website would present five minutes of a movie, get viewers to vote for the next bit, then produce the next five minutes of footage at their behest. This was the future, we were told.
The workload was frenetic and joyous, and the company enjoyed middling repute as innovators. And then . . . nothing. The ideas withered on the vine, the funding dried up, and our team of film-makers and techy types sat in a glossy London office, avoiding eye contact.
Eventually, after mere months, the company sputtered to a halt. There would be no grace period; no redundancies. In time, I heard that my successor at the record label had been fast-tracked. A year after I left, they had been given the go-ahead to hire another A&R manager.
On my final afternoon in the film company, we sat among the detritus, exhausted by the company’s protracted death rattle. For want of anything else to do, we tossed ideas back and forth. “What do you think of the idea of creating an interactive boyband?” I ventured. There were a few cynical sniffs.
“Think about it,” I pressed. “You could get people to vote via a website or phone line to put members of the public into a boyband. It would be like the people’s boyband. A talent show.”
The idea hung limply in the air for a few minutes before I went back to packing boxes.
