Meaning amidst chaos.

 

The room was familiar. I had been there before. When it started. 

Talk to me about “duty” Tony. 

It sounded almost like a cry for help to a father-figure, from a person looking for some reassurance. And that in reality is exactly what it was.

Authenticity is when people express themselves, in words and actions, in line with what they really think, regardless of whether it is commercially smart or politically correct. Like an artist leaving their big hit single off the album because they didn’t write the song, and it doesn’t sit with their current artistic vibe. 

Conversely, things done and said only for reasons of financial gain and personal advancement are de facto inauthentic, meaning very sadly that almost everything around us now in this “post-truth” world is fugazi.

Anything goes, as long as it serves its purpose, right?

It’s not fucking real.

So as you get older, the quest for things that are genuine, meaningful, becomes more pressing. Significantly more. 

 

The Greta Garbo of finance. 

Tony is Anthony Deden, the reclusive Yoda of finance, and the questioner is Grant Williams. 

Tony doesn’t ever market his services to maximise his assets-under-management, and that makes him a total outlier in his line of work. He only accepts to manage your wealth, after he interviews you, and if he thinks you have the right principles. He speaks to you with warm eyes, and a soothing delivery, but you know inside he is judging your character. That’s intimidating.

He is truly an extraordinary man, guided by core principles of authenticity. He invests in companies that have multi-generational sustainability, where the owning family will likely still have total skin in the game. He is the opposite of a flip-flopping, momentum trader chasing quarterly performance.

Tony, like Garbo, doesn’t do interviews, and this therefore is quite a thing. 

It is a discussion lasting nearly 5 hours, probing everything Tony has assimilated over 45 years of husbanding the savings of others. The piece offers a depth of life and business wisdom that he himself will eventually distill into a set of private letters to leave to his grandchildren.

This is serious philosophy, an extraordinary watch, and will be the last one of these About Time long-forms that Grant ever does. The circle closes where it began.

(Don’t tell Grant but “The Confessional” podcast is a sport rip-off of “About Time”. Just as these Columns are utterly inspired by “TTMYGH”. Even Bowie admitted to being a plagiarist. It is what it is.)

 

A question of duty. 

Conflict and true loss are in a bull market. Positions are polarised, sides are taken, people live or die, fortunes won or lost.

In this constant chaos, introspection is now everywhere. If the world outside our window is harsh and cruel, the mind will naturally wander to more basic questions.

What actually is our duty? Our meaning?

And this imperative of responsibility is the question for today’s Sunday Column.

Especially how we should approach the management of the industry of sport, beyond first-order analysis of commercial strategy and tactics. It cannot continue to be just about thinking how to squeeze even more juice out of the same lemon. 

There must be a more glorious lighthouse? Sport’s version of Tony Deden. 

If there isn’t, we are in bad shape.

 

Trees stripped bare of all they wear. What do I care?

Yes I know. It’s October after all, albeit a rather disturbing one. 

One notes that Gianni Infantino is present at the announcement of the Gaza ceasefire. Fugazi is indeed ubiquitous, and this isn’t at all a good moment. Decent people can feel the stench of fake, selfish and insincere, every moment of every day.

We can also see how they are reacting. It’s in Grant’s cry for reassurance, Tony’s need to leave a manual to his grandkids, Demetri looking to a theist stranger, for an answer he may never receive. 

Demetri Kofinas is the battle-hardened host of a big finance podcast. His thing for a while has been in lamenting what he calls “financial nihilism”, the making of money without any guiding values or morals, and he now wants to talk to me about  “answers and love”.

He liked a previous Sunday Column.

The answer was here all the time.

An hour in he starts to cry on camera as he reads the Tim Rice lyrics that inspired the piece:

And as for fortune, and as for fame

I never invited them in

Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions, they’re not the solutions they promised to be

The answer was here all the time…

I swallow hard, flummoxed, because I’m not really sure what is going on anymore. With anything. Why is this very clever and successful man crying? He is not even a believer.

None of us by definition have ever lived a Fourth Turning, and maybe this is exactly what it feels like. Emotion bouncing off the walls.

Desperate emotion from a sense of things just slipping away.

(If of interest, here LINK is the discussion, generously put in front of the Hidden Forces paywall for this audience.)

 

Our secrets are the same.

A book unexpectedly arrives in the post from an old mate. The disturbing month of October continues, very pleasantly this time. 

The autobiography of Kerr and Burchill recounts, from their different perspectives, a friendship lasting the best part of 60 years. The arc of the Minds, from the first three albums that didn’t sell, the Miracle Promised that eventually arrived, the fall from grace in the new millenium, to the total redemption of mature men back filling stadia.

An epic walk on the wild side of life, all whilst tending their tomatoes in Taormina. It doesnt get more introspective than this. Reflecting at 65 why you are still selling-out the Hollywood Bowl with genuine credibility, but maybe finding more peace with Sicilian locals who don’t give a shit about any of that. 

Which audience, whose acceptance, do you actually care more about at this point? Isn’t that the real question?

Whose “love” do you still need after all you have done? 

This book is the most human of stories, of equal philosophical gravitas to that of Mr Deden. Perhaps even more so, given that the boys have most definitely touched many more lives.

But the secrets of both their different worlds seem to me pretty much the same. Disadvantaged at the starting blocks, but with raw ambition and belief. And the courage to test themselves against the world, always with a code of values and a sense for duty. 

 

Pleasantly Disturbed.

Through the early chapters I revisit the origin story of Charlie and Jim, recognising very vividly my Glasgow of the late 70s and early 80s; Citizens Theatre, Celtic Park, Sons and Fascination.

That album was their first for our Virgin label, and gives the theme tune for the AreYouNotEntertained podcast!

The pages fly by, stories of early promise and Glasgow gallus*.

Some members of the fellowship can’t make the full journey to find the ring, and have to get off the horse. The eternal test of loyalty, over ambition and excellence, so so prevalent in sport teams. The pain of having to deliver the message that they are no longer up to the task.

The impossible conflict of having your moment finally arrive when you are a fresh husband and father, and your wife is herself a rockstar. What to do?

 

* Gallus: Glasgow slang: cheeky or bold

If ever an adjective so suited a city. Ironically, the very prerequisite for leaving it.  

Gallus like when at 17 you agree not to take the train to Euston to doorstep the London record A&R guys with demo tapes. 

We stay here in Glasgow and wait for them. They will all come to us.

And they did. They came to see the boys who wrote Pleasantly Disturbed. This is the song that would change their lives. And that of many others. 

I queue up that track on Spotify. It’s been a while.

The song title is very apposite, because there is objectively no fucking way that a song as rich and layered as this can be written in a Gorbals warehouse by two urchins from the high-rise flats, with no experience beyond the bottom of their street.

And yet. 

I google the reviews from back then to understand the reaction; articles like this: Meaning of “Pleasantly Disturbed” by Simple Minds.

the emotional and psychological complexities of the human experience, highlighting feelings of disconnect, vulnerability, and the search for meaning amidst chaos.

That’s it. That’s what’s been nagging me for a while about my work (in sport). Why even the sharpest posts and take-downs always smell a bit superficial, skirting the main problem.

All perfectly summarised in that quote.

 

For the good of the game.

Our favourite facile trope, thrown around way too easily. Never seriously asking to whom the custodians of sport owe a duty; a true duty of care. And is it moral, financial or legal?

A duty of care is the legal obligation to act with reasonable care to avoid causing foreseeable harm to others. This legal standard requires individuals and organisations to behave as a responsible person would in similar circumstances.

The problem is that sport is living in a chaos where no “similar circumstances” exist. We are well into the uncharted waters of perfect storms.

Our worthy sport newsletters and podcasts are full of commentary on the events of the day, but never the signals of an era. Few are looking for the real meaning amidst all this chaos.

Sport, we remember, is the definitive short-term “business” and that’s never positive for the ultimate good of the game.

 

*
You see a cold private equity firm about to buy Atletico Madrid. The industry buzz will all be about the numbers, the shiny new stadium, leveraged returns, and some narrative around rising interest in premium sport as an asset class. Who instead is thinking about El Cholo, a football man as authentic as they come, in a truly particular club. He has worked miracles. This isn’t going to end elegantly. 

 

**
You see league fixtures from La Liga and Serie A being taken to Miami and Perth respectively. Presumably to build the sport in new markets? Grow revenues? Fill the funnel? And the fans? It seems off. Very off.

 

**
You see sport’s very lax attitude to the betting world, scooping up big money from all directions, whilst covering their ears, eyes and mouth to the very significant risk they are embracing. A sensible person with values knows that this is going to boomerang hard one day. Once you lose “authentic and true” from your product, it is very very hard to get it back. No-one will watch when it is accepted wisdom that the fix is in, and has been for a while. Was it worth it for a few extra bucks?

 

***
You see top athletes on tennis courts and football pitches keel over from too many games. Matches put on at times to satisfy TV schedules, regardless of any oppressive heat and humidity. Sport players squeezed like lemons telling us to stop, but we don’t listen. We actually don’t even care. 

 

****
You see Israeli fans being banned from Birmingham because “their safety can’t be guaranteed”. Where is the consistency in banning Russian football teams, and not Israeli? Or neither? Who is making those judgements? And why? There is no real duty of care.

 

*****
You see federations, in sports like rugby and golf, acting as a unified cartel, threatening any worker who has the temerity to choose to which employer they will offer their services. Hard-core illegal restriction of trade. In 2025? Are we kidding?

 

******
You see financial funds coming to you to ask how they can deploy capital into open sports leagues. But they still aren’t asking the really insightful questions. Because they still don’t get it fully yet. Promotion and relegation kills any idea of the cashflow stability and low “VOL” they seek. But they need to deploy capital. Bank those arrangement fees.

 

*******
You see traditional fans the world over all now priced out of following the asset and brand they alone have created. Because the crypto bro from Costa Rica can drop $15k for his seat, and revenues must be maximised.

 

********
You see Imola removed as a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

 

Et al.

 

The nihilism of sport.

To be clear, there is valid nuance in all of the above debates. A person of intelligence could argue them both ways. But is that the point? The Manchester City/EPL legal war could go in either direction, but the future of sport shouldn’t be about who can afford the best lawyers. We should all know what is right.

Know what is our duty of care to the societal and community asset of our games. 

Sport has no healthy future in sync with its historical past if it doesn’t answer that question, and quickly. But the question doesn’t even get asked these days, unless there is a black-swan demanding knee-jerk “crisis comms”.

The NBA (always described as best-in-class) is finding that out the hard way this weekend. They should be checking all those juicy new media deals for out-clauses. The truth is that Adam Silver, and the rest of our industry, has only ever had but one KPI, and that is revenue growth.

This would be, and is, Demetri’s sport nihilism.

 

Letters to our Grandchildren.