Duncan Parry featured on the Mad.co.uk weekender
It's the weekend, how do you feel?
Glad! I enjoy having a busy work life, but who doesn’t look forward to relaxing and escaping from their calendar for a few days?
What's your favourite Friday night drink?
It depends entirely on my mood. On a hot day lager wins – that first gulp of cold, refreshing beer is unbeatable. Sometimes I switch to Magners cider – especially when they have pretty girls giving it away free in our local near work. If I’ve had a stressful or busy day, I might start with a Jack Daniels and ice – no coke – to slow me down and set me up for the rest of the night.
Do you ever have to work at the weekend?
Yes – I’m one of the owners of the company, so it’s inevitable. I try to ensure that if I do work at the weekend, I have at least one day when I don’t turn on the laptop or use my PDA.
I don’t always achieve that objective, though – the build up of emails I have to catch up on alone can take several hours.
If yes, how do you feel about it?
We’re a comparatively young agency, despite our management team’s pedigree in search and digital marketing going back to the early days of online (pre Google, for example).
So, inevitably there are tasks I need to complete out of hours. But over the last year I have been able to delegate areas of work to dedicated members of staff: tasks that took a few hours once have grown in their complexity and time requirements as the company has expanded.
What's your favourite weekend activity?
Honestly? Sitting in the sun outside a great pub with friends and a cold beer knowing there’s good food on the way and a fun night out ahead. Nothing beats kicking back with friends and forgetting the rest of the world with a cold beer (or six).
If you could spend the weekend with anyone in the world (friends and family aside) who would it be and why?
I feel like I should be giving a highbrow, well considered answer! I’ve studied the Industrial Revolution so maybe one of the great inventors – Brunel, Stephenson – whose work fundamentally changed the world and also helped build the Britain of today; I see a lot of parallels between the “Internet Revolution” and the Industrial one.
But I have a suspicion they wouldn’t be the most stimulating company after a while, and it would be a bit like being at work, so…Raquel Welsh when she was at the height of her film career.
A beautiful, talented, rich woman – need I say more?
Where would you go?
That would be telling…
