Sponsorship...

Sponsorship is something I've been mentioning in fairly vague terms for a little while now, in general because there was an awful lot of the stuff that was in embryonic stages, and an awful little that was actually concrete and dependable...Round about the middle of last week, in an effort to remedy this problem and generate some interest, I toyed briefly with rebranding myself as the Jade Goody Memorial Ride, but things seem to have started coming good of their own accord anyway.

The sponsors page is still awaiting a few logos before it accurately reflects contributions, and I'm awaiting a few final decisions before I can confirm who is providing me with which parts of my (all-important) bicycle, but in general things have fallen towards place, if not entirely into it as yet.

All of the legwork that has gone into this eventuality made me think of Ewan McGregor, that well-known Scottish actor who starred in a few great films before relocating to Hollywood and starring in lots of bad ones. Amongst all that starring, McGregor also found time to hire people to organise him a trip around the world by motorbike, a trip he duly undertook in the company of a long-standing friend, a camera man, a security guard, a cook, a tent pole erector, a mechanic, and many other people that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find in the sort of adventure that his BMW advert was dishing-up. Since returning, McGregor has also found his way into the corridors of the perfumerie, Davidoff, who created for him a nice little fragrance, entitled simply as, Adventure. Now either Davidoff's perfume smells awful, or Ewan McGregor's Adventure had very little in common with an actual adventure, but the aroma apparently captures the essence of being somewhat rugged. None of that, however, is actually what I'm driving at here.

I bought McGregor's book - a chronicle of his aromatic adventures - for my brother... it was a Christmas present some years ago, and he read about two chapters before discarding it along with all of the other crummy Christmas presents that were probably discarded around the globe that Christmas. Before he put the thing down for good, my brother shared with me one excerpt in which McGregor talked of a director buying him a Ducati superbike as a gift, before then speaking in the next pages of his adventure needing to find a sponsor... or perhaps being rendered financially unviable. This leaves me to wander whether Ewan McGregor was perhaps ripped off at minimum-wage for his role in the Star Wars films... Perhaps nobody told our gullable Scot that he was starring in one of history's biggest film franchises. Or perhaps he was just doing that fairly archetypal thing whereby the rich learn how to feign monetary concerns so as to seem that little bit more normal... Either way, that particular episode has been in my head as I've scrabbled about for my own sponsorship, my heart bleeding and bubbling like a fountain for poor, dear Ewan.