The Accidental Entrepreneur, The Survivor Edition

3The winning formula

During my years at UIP, I was surrounded by movie stars, but my professional life took something of a backseat when it was overshadowed by a big shift in my personal life.

In 1995, I met Jeff Allis. We had been set up by my girlfriend Rachel, who arranged for us to meet at the Melbourne Skyshow. I would certainly not say it was love at first sight. Jeff was late and by the time he arrived I had somewhere else to be; it was one of those days. And I thought he had bad teeth and an attitude to match. Jeff remembers not liking the jeans I was wearing. He also thought I would have been better looking from the description Rachel gave him. (In all fairness, she told him I looked like Elle Macpherson! Jeff told me later, I was attractive, but no Elle. You will never die wondering what Jeff is thinking.) We said hello and went our separate ways. And that was it — or so I thought.

Working with movie stars and finding my soulmate

After the failed ‘date’ Rachel continued her campaign about how terrific she thought Jeff was. She kept talking about how great we would be together and, after about ten days, I caved in and called him. Jeff hadn’t really impressed me, but my friend was nagging me and I figured I had nothing to lose. At the time, I was working on the promotion of the movie Rob Roy and Jeff was program director for Austereo Radio Network’s Fox FM, so I rang him on the pretext of picking his brains about publicity opportunities. We arranged to go to dinner ...