DAVE: About 1990 you go into Therapy.MARK: I was busy as a director from day one and I turned over an enormous amount of work in my first few years. After being repped by several different Production Companies I ended up at BLINK.I had a lovely time there and it's only when the boss James Studholme asked me to design their stationary that I rediscovered my love for graphic design and print.It was around this time that I got a call from my old mate Malcolm Venville.I’d first met Malcolm about 15 years earlier when he’d turned up at SPDC&J with a photography portfolio.I liked his work and before long he was our ‘house’ photographer. He helped us out with some Wrangler concepts that the client wouldn’t buy and we repaid him with most of the photography for the Nike campaign.On top of that we gave him his first ever commercial shoot when we won BT a couple of years later.Anyway, he was calling to ask me if I’d join him at his production company Therapy Films as a partner….how could I refuse.DAVE: You ran Therapy more like an ad agency than a production company.MARK: I joined Therapy Films not only to have a piece of my own production company but so I could work closely with Malcolm again but it didn’t work out that way because he had just taken off in the States.That meant that I was left by and large to my own devices in London.I was still shooting a lot of commercials but the graphic design business was doing well too since the identity that I’d done for Blink had turned out to be one of the biggest award winners of the year.In fact it had gone down so well that I was still doing extra graphic work for Blink despite the fact that I now owned half of a rival production company.On top of that I decided to launch a promotional magazine that not only needed to be designed but filled with adverts.All of this coincided with the fact that I’d fallen out of love with D&AD and I’d taken it upon myself to relaunch the Creative Circle in order to give D&AD a kick in the pants.So of course I needed to draft in a bit of creative help, so I can see why any visitors would think it looked like an agency. It definitely had a separate creative floor.….Not forgetting that we published our book of Malcolm’s Photos of Mexican Wrestlers, and I remember recruiting a certain Dave Dye and Paul Silburn to do the press ads to sell it.DAVE: What’s the most important ad in your career?MARK: The Cadbury’s Creme Egg commercial I did at Burnetts got me into D&AD for the first time, impressed Chris Palmer and secured me a job at BBH. Cleaning up at Campaign Poster awards with Heineken ‘Shakin’ Stevens probably helped to get us on the list for Simons Palmer. Nike ‘Kick it’ got me 4 D&AD pencils in one night…all quite significant I suppose.It’s all luck though. I still think some of the best work that I’ve done has never seen the light of day. If that stuff had gone through would I have ‘made it’ earlier? Would I still be in the business if I hadn’t been lucky enough to work with the best account man I’ve ever encountered, Carl Johnson or his great right hand man Mike Perry.I’ve worked with some seriously talented creatives who haven’t found the spotlight because their work hasn’t been bought. I know from bitter experience that the skill that’s required to ensure that your ad is sold is probably more important than anything else.All that aside, I know that the creative work that I’m doing right now will determine my future in the business so it’s probably the most important.DAVE: You grew directors like you grew creatives. Why leave?MARK: I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a talent spotter and I did manage to find a spotlight for a couple of directors. But communication was difficult with Malcolm being in the States so often, especially as he was about to disappear off on his first feature film. We disagreed on who should run the company so I decided to do something else.I had no intention of starting another production company.DAVE: What was the idea behind COY?MARK: My producer Sara, said that she wanted a chat and proposed the idea of setting up a new company, I don’t know why I agreed, the Devil made me do it.Since I’d found my voice I’d been making up for lost time by being very shouty and immodest so I thought it would be a good idea to call the company ‘MODESTY’, but we found out that there was already a Modesty Films so we called it COY!To start off with we were very busy, made even busier by my decision to produce the second Creative Circle Annual out of our offices.Two minutes after we set up the recession hit. It was like someone had cut the phone lines. Our rep couldn’t even get appointments to see agency producers and creatives so that’s when I started doing my talks. I reckoned that we might not be able to get a 15 minute meeting with a junior creative team but if I do a talk I’ve got a captive audience for over an hour.The talks have opened up loads of unexpected opportunities, I’ve not only done them for agencies on both sides of the Atlantic but I’ve been asked to do them for clients as well.

DAVE: I went to a Paul Rand talk once and someone asked him whether he worried about having a style, he said ‘No, I do exactly what I like, and my tastes mean it’ll end up looking' I can tell your design a mile off.MARK: Did my Wrangler work look like my Nike work? The work I did at BBH looked like BBH work (apart from the Asda posters) and the same goes for the Lowes work.

DAVE: Hold on...it's a compliment, didn't you hear all that Paul Rand anecdote?MARK: I do revert to my personal default mode whenever I do my own non-commissioned work and I do so much of it that I’ve probably pigeon-holed myself. It’s a shame because I appreciate so many different styles (that’s why I got Paul Belford to design the first Creative Circle Annual and why I get you involved in lots of my projects)…but ho hum, despite being my harshest critic, I like what I do.If other people like it too then I’m delighted but it doesn’t hurt me if it’s not their cup of tea. I think my primary intention is to entertain rather than give a Swiss minimalist designer a trouser tent.DAVE: Is there a Carry On cast member you haven't worked with?MARK: I have worked with most of them, I can’t deny it.That all came about because me and Chris would volunteer for all of the radio briefs. No one else in the BBH department wanted to do them but for us it was the perfect way to write some scripts and have a hand in directing our boyhood heroes.So we met Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Terry Scott, Barbera Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw, Leslie Phillips Bernard Cribbins and many more.It’s always baffled me why radio briefs were so unpopular, because no one seemed to care too much about them we got loads of creative freedom as well as learning first hand about directing and writing something that works within 30 seconds.Sadly we never got to work with Sid James or Hattie Jaques.