“Babysitting” was the answer I gave whenever anyone asked what I did for Lord Alan Sugar. He liked to keep me nearby. This usually meant that I could be found hanging around the main door of the office at street level, ready to greet my boss whenever he came in or out of the building. I was also responsible for fetching the evening paper for him each afternoon.
Although the work was very mundane, it did have one huge compensation: you heard about major events so much sooner than everyone else. On this occasion I was one of the first to discover that JK Rowling’s treasure hunt was now live. The rules were simple: find the trove and fill your pockets with the solid gold coins as fast as possible.
It took a while for me to realise that I was the one who held the key to the treasure hunt – literally. The trove was under a manhole cover in the street, and the tiny key to unlock the manhole cover was on my key-ring. I turned the key in the lock and, sure enough, just under the plate were hundreds of gold coins. I started stuffing my pockets, as did everyone else who spotted what was going on.
Back at the office afterwards, I discussed the advantages of my job with another of Lord Sugar’s workers. She agreed that we held very privileged positions, and wondered whether we could get our hands on the original artwork for the coins. This was bound to be extremely valuable (as would be my manhole cover key, I hoped). At this point JK Rowling stepped out from a door on the landing to show us the currency design documentation. Everything been very well-researched, with the final design referencing sources that spanned two millennia, from ancient Egypt to the twenty-first century, including Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. We were suitably impressed.
Perhaps what was most extraordinary at this point, however, was JK Rowling “herself”. We discovered that “she” was not, in fact, a glamorous mother of three who enjoyed the occasional splurge on handbags at Harvey Nicols, but a dumpy, geeky, middle-aged man.
JK Rowling features on Dreamaticus quite frequently. You’ll also find her here:
Dreamaticus 