13 Jan 10 Rohan diving into the dim and distant past

I got a Facebook message from Mark Palacio a long-time friend who I met about 25 years ago when we both worked at Rohan. The Rohan Blog, Rohantime has a carousel on it’s home page with a picture of me diving off a cliff into the sea in Malta while directing a photo-shoot for Rohan.

It was Feb 1988 Blue Lagoon Malta, shooting a catalogue with Paul Howcroft, Adam Croxen, some models and the photographer Mike Heffernan. The photographer said the shots were a bit wooden and I was standing on the cliff top above the sea and I said, “If I jump, can you get a shot”. He got out a 35mm motorwind camera and at the last second I decided to just dive off the thing. Long way down, it hurt, soaked all my money and ruined my watch – but it was used as the catalogue cover. It was a good time. We stayed in a castle in Malta and it was at that time that Paul Howcroft promoted me to become Rohan’s Marketing Manager.

Given the mayhem of litigation that took place between Rohan and me, Paul, Adam and Mark a couple of years later, it is hardly surprising that they declined to give me a name check!

It’s interesting how Rohan crops up from time to time as I go through life. I got contacted on the 30th anniversary by their designers looking for any Rohan samples I may have had. I was contacted by newspapers both national and from Skipton (where Rohan launched). About three years ago, I was stopped after a presentation and asked about my time at Rohan by someone I had never met before.

There was a lot of bad blood for a long time between me and Rohan, but it would be good to get to know them again. I can see that Tim Jasper (who I first met when he was a customer at Rohan’s Bristol shop) is Brand Director at Rohan and the founder, Sarah Howcroft is back there working on Social media for them.