
In the 1980s, people would stick their nose in if asked…
Someone said to me that, today, she does not know anyone in the media who takes cocaine.
I suspect she should go out and meet more people.
But I remember… I guess it was in the 1980s sometime… I had an interview for a project…
I guess it must have been for a contract as a Researcher at a successful independent TV production company…
The owner of the company sat at one side of a desk and I sat facing her. She did not impress me because she seemed a bit uninterested in the whole process as if it were just a necessary but dull chore she had to go through. As, indeed, it was.
About a third of the way through the interview, she took out some cocaine and offered me some.
“Thanks,” I said, shaking my head politely. “I don’t.”
So she put some in a line on the desktop in front of her, made a tube of paper and snorted it while continuing with her explanation of what the upcoming TV programmes were about and how the company was organised.
I didn’t get the job.
I do not think she was doing the coke thing as a test for me to see my reaction.
I think it was just a perfectly normal, casual thing to do like (in those days) smoking a cigarette or sipping some tea.
We had never met before.