Pass the mic

But, for all their droll eclat and household-name status, are Ian Hislop and Angus Deayton really worth £10,000, Anthea Turner, Chris Tarrant and Dale Winton £12,000 and Alan Whicker and Chris Evans a stonking £20,000 for a few hours’ soft labour? There an even those who, like old master paintings, have soared into a serene realm above common commerce. Baroness Thatcher, Richard Branson and former British Leyland, chairman Sir Michael Edwards are all price-on-application.

Both companies take a ten per cent cut of all fees, but Morley and Sternberg caution against treating the quoted figures as definitive.
‘Prices are ever changing as people popularity ebbs and flows,’ says Sternberg. ‘They’re like commodities in the futures market; you can tell à celebrity’s current stock by how much they charge. For example, we’ve got Ken Livingstone at £2,500, but I know he’ll be charging more since he became mayor, while Lord Archer’s on the list at £7,000 but I’m sure he’ll accept less because had a rash of cancelled bookings in the wake of the perjury stories.

The hottest property on today’s market, according to Morley, is dimwitted TV chef Jamie Oliver.
(Tellingly, Delia has been relegated to ‘Women’s Institutes and the like’.)

So, once a name has been secured, what exactly is expected of them?
‘There are generally two things clients want,’ says Sternberg, whose own include Shell, Disney and Saatchi & Saatchi. ‘A speech that’s apparently been tailored for them, rather than some set of stock gag-lines and the feeling that this guy will be a mate afterwards, mingle, have their pictures taken; it’s the kind of thing people remember, you know, “I had a drink with Jack Charlton,” or whatever.’

The celebrity – or ‘speaker’ – is briefed via conference call with the client. They’re given a potted history of the company and told which MDs they can take the piss out of — plus those they definitely can’t touch. ‘Rory Bremner’s great at that,’ says Sternberg. ‘We booked him the other day for BP and Amoco’s merger and logo launch and he wrote an original script, bringing in relevant points, right up to the night itself Tomorrow’s World’s Adam Hart-Davis goes to even more exhaustive lengths, says Morley: ‘He was appearing at the Building Research Institute dinner and he cycled in and started constructing things out of toilet rolls and the like.’

But the mingling is a little more problematic. ‘A lot of the bigger names just want to leave straight away,’ says Morley. Do they tend to look down their noses at the whole concept, then? ‘You’ve got to guard against that,’ says Sternberg. ‘You want these people to add to an event, create a sense of occasion, not treat it with contempt.’