Page 54 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

it as a step towards my ultimate goal. Psychologically, it felt like
a step up. It also meant more money, and I was hoping that being
at a bigger company would give me a bit more structure and might
even provide some training. Clive had given me a start, but now I
realised I was ready for the next step. All of a sudden, I didn’t have
a job: I had a career.
My branch of City Centre Staff Bureau was in Victoria, and one
of the first jobs I had was to recruit my own staff as it was a
brand-new branch. I was quite lonely those first couple of weeks,
so I asked Bernie to meet me for lunch. He was obviously
impressed by my office, by my job title and maybe even by my suit.
‘Hire me. Why don’t I come and work for you?’
Big mistake.
With just the two of us in the office not a lot of work was going
to get done, but in Bernie’s first week in the office just about the
worst thing that could have happened, happened: he picked up a
vacancy for a fashion model. Even less work was going to get done
now.
Fashion buyers often need regular-shaped women to model the
clothes, as there’s no point having a size-8, six-foot-tall woman
wearing street fashions: they needed to try them on women who
looked like their average customers. So, as you can imagine, when
we placed an ad in the Standard for a ‘Size-12 model, no
experience necessary’, we were inundated. The phone didn’t stop
ringing! We must have interviewed hundreds of women: they were
booked in every hour for weeks, and there was only one vacancy.
As young guys we saw it as a great way to meet girls, and so we
decided to specialise in fashion models. Needless to say we didn’t
do very well that year and only just made enough placements to
cover our costs, which just about kept my boss at bay. Eventually
the morning came when I woke up and thought: what am I doing?
I wasn’t making any money and I hadn’t developed. I’d had an
absolutely fantastic time working with Bernie and dating models,

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