It was always the intention of Charles and Maurice from the very beginning to be the "Biggest and the Best" and that meant pitching for every piece of business going, whether invited to or not, and we always had at least one, sometimes two or even more 'new business' pitches happening at the same time.

In 1972 at Golden Square, we spent a whole 2 weeks excitedly preparing a pitch for the influential Audi Cars business which included research and marketing reports, media recommendations and a huge creative pitch of posters, ads and TV storyboards (and to this day I'm quite sure that the research and marketing reports were totally 'invented').

The presentation went, apparently, very well and although we had to wait at least a week for a decision Charles was badgering Maurice daily to "ring them and find out". Although neither of them knew what was coming.

A couple of days before D-day, Maurice somehow wangled the opportunity to pitch for Triumph Cars, part of the then British Leyland, but with one awkward problem – it had to be the next day or not at all – and the decision was made.

We'd pitch to Triumph using the Audi Presentation (and I remember Charles saying "they're both bloody cars, can't be that different").

So that afternoon, evening and most of the night was spent 'doctoring' the entire Audi pitch which meant 'snowpaque-ing out' all the Audi references and logos on all reports and inserting the word Triumph and re-copying and binding them, and carefully changing the logos, headlines and straplines on all the creative work, which also meant re-drawing the grills on the fronts of all the cars and invisibly cutting them in – and by the morning we had a fully fledged 'Triumph Cars' pitch.

Again, apparently, the presentation went extremely well and the client was especially impressed with our ability to produce such an "extensive, thorough and professional presentation at such short notice". If only they knew.

Two days later and the results were in and amazingly we had won the Audi Cars business worth £300,000, a large account then, and although we missed out on the Triumph business (it stayed with its existing agency) British Leyland were so impressed that they offered Saatchi the new Leyland Cars Corporate business, worth just £50,000.

And, as it wasn't possible to take on two pieces of conflicting business, Maurice controversially, but in retrospect extremely wisely, persuaded Charles to accept Leyland's smaller, less interesting business and reject the now, rather confused, Audi Cars - and the rest is history.

British Leyland went on to become one of Saatchi's largest and most prestigious accounts worth over £20M in old money.

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Written for the book, CHUTSPAH & CHUTSPAH