I first met Marilyn back in the 1980s when we both worked for a large ad agency in Paddington. When yet another financial crisis hit we were both made redundant, but Marilyn wasn’t going to let that stop her and we got talking about setting up our own business. She was the account executive for Philips Electrical and I the designer, so she spoke to the client to see if they would continue to work with us, as we were the people doing the work, not the agency.

With them onside, we needed to find an office and Marilyn had used an animations company that had offices on the top floor of 18 Greek Street who said they had a spare room they could rent out to us. This building once housed the Establishment Club, of Peter Cook etc fame from the 1960s, but its fortunes had faded over the years and now the club on the ground floor was a porn cinema called the Exciting Cinema with a Jamaican club on the first.

We came up with the not overly clever name of Kocher-Sparrow for the company. Let me say that it was Marilyn who was the driving force who got the business up and running, with myself just glad to still have a job! We decided to publicise our business with a mailing card showing the outside of the building and the sign for the cinema, so people could find us easily.

The offices were very central, but the cinema downstairs could cause problem on the occasions it was raided by the Vice Squad and I remember, what appeared to be a bunch of unkempt thugs, charging up the stairs, telling us all to stay were we were. Our offices were totally separate, but that didn’t bother the police and they wanted to go through everything in our office despite Marilyn’s protestations. The animation studio had lots of important and expensive video tapes removed to find out if they contained porn. The coppers must have been very disappointed with the content! 

We progressed to a point were we could do with larger offices, just at the same time the  Jamaican drinking club closed, so the first floor became vacant. We set to and decorated the large room using  a red and grey scheme which was Marilyn’s idea, that was very modern and not the usual orange and brown associated with the 80’s.

I remember we needed some more office equipment and got our own photo copier and a computer. This was a very basic business one for Marilyn to use (once again see photo). As a designer I was still using, pens, glue, markers etc. as there were no Apple Macs like today and the idea of designing with a computer was well in the future. 

The business progressed, but one problem was 75% of our business was with Phillips, which was fine until the day the client had a heart attack. He survived, but had to retire with immediate effect, and the guy who replaced him had his own ideas if who he wanted to use as an ad agency, so we lost the client. The long and the short of this was both Marilyn and I found out very quickly what it was like to go bust. We decided it best for us to follow our individual paths and you all know what she achieved after that.

Wife. Mother. Lawyer. Traveller etc etc. An amazing person and personality I will never forget.

So sad to think I will never get together with her again.

Bill Kocher