In the early days of Saatchi, Charles and Maurice were often at each others throats with regular screaming matches and occasionally even worse – and it was early one morning (about 8am early) in the Golden Square offices that I first witnessed one of these serious brotherly disagreements.

The main office area was a large ground floor open-plan affair and at the back was a small spiral staircase which led down to a window-less meeting room and a 'spring closed' door to the studio which had a little light filtering down from the upstairs reception through a gap in the ceiling.

I was putting together a press ad artwork for Charles, ready for a client who was arriving about 10 ish. These were pre-Apple Mac days and artworks were created by manually 'pasting' paper type and images onto mounting board, which was then held in place on a drawing board with masking tape (sounds somewhat archaic now).

The artwork was virtually complete when the door opened and in walked Charles to see the work and, as was often the case, he made a few changes which naturally I happily obliged (it was never too smart to argue with Charles but with creative work he was usually right anyway!).

So I began revising the ad, carefully lifting the prints, re-gluing, trimming and re-positioning as Charles had requested and just as I was cleaning the artwork the door sprung open again and….in walked Maurice. After a couple of pleasantries he looked over my shoulder at the ad and was at first perplexed – because the ad was rather different to the layout we had agreed the previous evening.

I explained that Charles had already been in and had made these revisions to which he quietly asked me to ignore Charles and re-revise the ad back to its original layout and with a parting "back as it was please – I'll talk to Charles" he walked out of the studio and the door sprung closed behind him.

Another 10 minutes passed and I'd tediously revised the artwork back again when in walked Charles to review 'his' work. He saw the ad, asked what the **** I'd been doing. I explained that I had revised the ad but that Maurice had revised it back again and he almost exploded.

He asked me, now rather loudly, to return the ad to his version and stormed out.

So for the third time, up came all the prints which were carefully lifted, re-glued and repositioned when, just as I was finally cleaning the artwork the door opened and in walked Maurice…again…who was equally grumpy that the ad still wasn't looking as he had asked and as I began to explain the door opened again and (thankfully) in walked Charles.

Both were of course now aware of each others 'interference' and whilst I sat quietly waiting for a decision an argument ensued that quickly became rather fierce, followed by some nasty pushing, grabbing and culminating in the two locked together and falling under my desk into a fully fledged punch-up.

My desktop bounced up and down for about 30 seconds when Maurice somehow escaped, appeared between my knees and the desk leg, stood up, ripped the artwork off my drawing board and ran out of the studio….and the door sprung shut behind him.

Charles leapt up and ran after him, through the door which again sprung itself shut.

The row raged on outside for a few seconds when, suddenly, the door burst open and in flew Maurice, very fast, very backwards, glasses askew and more importantly, artwork-less…and fell to the floor by the side of my desk.

Throughout all this I had somehow remained in my chair and I remember that all I could say to Maurice was "oh well, can't win 'em all" and he calmly got up and walked out.

As for the ad, it was presented to the client (Charles version) who approved it despite it looking as if it had been in a fight. Which oddly it had.

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Written for the book, CHUTSPAH & CHUTSPAH