The Big Sell Out
Finished the adverts and posters this week for Tim Emmett, Karen Darke and Simon Yates tours in 09 (not having enough to do - I also a co-own the speaking agency Speakers from the Edge with my long suffering partner Rebecca Varley). I’ve never really considered myself as a details person, but juggling DPI’s, bleeds, quite zones and CMYK (rather than RGB), I suppose I am. Climbing a mountain often comes down to the small details, rather than the big, and very often it’s these things that fill your thoughts for weeks and months before a big trip.
Anyway finishing these posters, and writing the press releases that go out with such tours to newspapers and radio stations, I was struck with the difficulty of selling oneself, or more importantly, selling yourself without selling out.
This has become more of an issue recently with my spate of radio, TV and newspaper interviews that have come about due to Psychovertical and my tour. The problem is that very often - when talking to a none climbing journalist, especially when you have a three minute radio slot - you end up using a kind of short hand when it comes to your exploits. This can lead to people saying “Andy has soloed the hardest route in the world” or “Andy is one of the best mountaineers in the UK”, things that you know are only half truths. Things your peers will take as lies and shoot you down when they get the chance.
These grey truths have made me reappraise other well known climbers and celebrity outdoor types like Bear Grylls and Ran Fiennes, people I would often criticize in the past, people who have used the media to make careers out of their passions, but who along the way have stepped on the toes of their peers. It’s easier for Bear to say he was in the SAS, rather than in the TA’s (I’ve met several real SAS soldiers who would like to take Bear to task with this), and for Ran to take on the mantel of ‘greatest living explorer’ (rather than point out that actually that should maybe go to his arch rival Berger Ousland), because really trying to explain that these things are much more complex than they seem (just as the Reticent wall was NOT the hardest wall in the world when I soloed it - because such a statement is meaningless) just doesn’t work when talking to a a journalist - who’s simply looking at filling up a blank.
Of course the easiest thing to do is let others make those mistakes, riding the wave of false hero status, yet being able to say to your peers that they just got it wrong.
But fundamentally I think it comes down to whether or not this person is warping the truth to such an extent that they are lying, and perhaps stealing the thunder of others who should really deserve it, or simply playing the game in order to further their cause, and in turn that of the sport they love.
Who would you rather be making a living from what they have achieved in their lives; Simon Yates, Tim Emmett and Karen Darke…or the latest crop of fly by night X factor finalists?
You can find out details of these tours here
— December 20, 2008 05:18 PM
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