About James Leavey

James Leavey is a freelance journalist, editor, tobacco historian, independent marketing & PR consultant, comedy scriptwriter, and occasional radio broadcaster who lives and works in north London, England, with his wife, Gwenda, and their smoker-friendly cat, Toffee. 

The son of a Dublin-born mother, and a German U-Boat officer - who was captured by the British in World War II, Leavey was born in Beckenham, Kent, England, in December 1947, instead of Berlin, Germany, where his father disappeared to and hasn’t been heard of since. 

He then had the misfortune (or luck, depending on your point of view) to grow up in Penge, a nondescript suburb of South London.  Penge was once described by Bill Cassandra, the Daily Mirror’s late, lamented columnist, as “ideal for a joke factory”.

After a less than satisfying schooling at St Anthony’s in Padua Road, Penge, most of which he avoided by going on the run to the nearest cinema or football field, Leavey’s first article was published in 1963 by Southern Africa, a weekly periodical based in Fleet Street, former home to Britain’s national press, where he started working as an office boy at the age of 15, rapidly becoming the youngest cub reporter working in London’s ‘Street of Ink’.

He also subbed for the same publisher, African World, Rhodesia & Nyasaland Today, and the Royal Commonwealth Society’s, African Affairs magazine.

Due mostly to the fact that he had no formal qualifications, Leavey then got side-tracked from mainstream journalism for 27 years, during which time he had over 50 jobs.

These included: theatre barman, usher and cloakroom attendant, lift-boy, coconut-ice and crystallised fondant maker in a sweet factory, office messenger, postal clerk, clothes sorter in a steam laundry, hospital porter, and organising subscriptions to international arts and photographic magazines on behalf of Britain’s art schools, universities and museums for London Art Bookshop/Alec Tiranti Ltd.

He was also a toy salesman, publicity assistant for Warner-Pathe Film Distributors in Wardour Street - home of the British film industry, copywriter for an advertising agency, junior clerk at the London College of Music - whose principal, at the time, was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s father, furniture delivery man for the Peter Jones store in King’s Road, Chelsea, stockroom assistant, assistant company secretary, pub cleaner, and telex operator.

In the 1960s, Leavey was a production assistant for WPN & Advertisers’ Review - since renamed, Campaign, International Models’ Yearbook, The Glasgow Herald (in George Outram & Co’s Fleet Street office), Outdoor Advertising, Point of Purchase Marketing, Stock Exchange Gazette, The Statist - a now defunct rival to The Economist, Scottish Field, TV Times, The Climber, The Skier, the Paisley Daily Express, and The Observer.

He was also a book-keeper for a Mayfair wig company, sorted out the dead letters department of Royal Insurance, made sandwiches for Maggie Smith in a South Kensington delicatessen, organised tours of the UK via chauffeur-driven Daimlers, washed glasses (and broke most of them) for a Piccadilly Circus pub, spent two days as a double-glazing demonstrator for Selfridges, and, not least, about nine months refuelling and selling fine cigarette lighters (and the occasional emerald necklace) for Asprey, the Royal jewellers in New Bond Street, Mayfair.

1967-1970, Leavey trained as an actor, part-time, first at the City Literary Institute just off Drury Lane, and then (after failing auditions for RADA and LAMDA) at Mountview Theatre School in North London. 

He was one of the 30 student actors who toured the USA, coast-to-coast, for six weeks in 1970 with a repertory (some of it televised) which included Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade, and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage. During this tour, Leavey was invited to address 2,000 University of California students on the art of comedy acting – not that he knows anything about the subject…

His last proper stage performance was in Samuel Beckett’s one-man play, Krapp’s Last Tape - a role he discussed recently with fellow Krapp-performers, Albert Finney and John Hurt. 

Leavey has since appeared, briefly, in the British low budget, hit Jewish comedy movie, Leon the Pig Farmer – not bad for a seriously lapsed Roman Catholic who only remembers Latin masses.

In 1999, he was a guest actor in the first, and probably the last, London performance of Molly by Mulligan – a new musical by his friend, the British cartoonist, Frank Dickens, creator of Bristow.

Over the last 33 years, Leavey has worked as an occasional stagehand for the Royal Shakespeare Company - on, among other noted plays, Peter Brook’s celebrated version of A Midsummer Nights’ Dream – widely acknowledged as one of the finest Shakespearean productions of the 20^th century, Royal National Theatre, English National Opera and several West End plays (including Relatively Speaking, Alan Ayckbourn’s first comedy play).

He also worked backstage on several West End musicals, including the original London productions of The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Two Cities and Cabaret (for which he was employed to light Judi Dench's cigarettes, on matinees).

In 1969, Leavey was the Academy Cinema’s part-time doorman for the first Buster Keaton Festival in Britain.  The Academy, whose three cinemas in Oxford Street were all non-smoking by the time it closed in 1986, established an enviable worldwide reputation for pioneering and establishing the work of new film directors, including Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Francois Truffaut, Andrzej Wajda, Satyajit Ray and Jean-Luc Godard.

From 1974-1975, Leavey was trained as an English teacher, part-time at Sidney Webb College, where he was also vice-president of the Polytechnic of Central London  - now University of Westminster - evening students’ union.  It was at that time Leavey was encouraged by his English tutor, Mel Gooding, to write short stories, comedy sketches, and poems – some of which were published in Slow Dancer magazine.

Meanwhile, during the day from 1974-1975, Leavey worked as a clerical officer for the Post Office - which was eventually split into two businesses in 1984, when its major telecommunications division, now known as BT, was privatised.

In 1995, Leavey became the Post Office’s First Aid Administration Officer for central London, responsible for training staff  (including those employed in the Post Office Tower – now the BT Tower – which at that time was London’s tallest building, deep level tunnels, telephone exchanges, engineering works, garages and offices) to deal with, among things, casualties of the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign.

In January 1980, Leavey got back into journalism, first as deputy editor of Post Office’s in-house computing magazine, Database, and eventually by suggesting and writing articles, art, theatre and especially film reviews for many other in-house publications, including Telecom Today, Post Office Courier, Tone, The Hooter, News and Views and the award-winning Telecom World. 

This all eventually culminated in Leavey’s creation and successful launch, as managing editor, of BT’s first major customer magazine, Business Communications.  

In February 1984, Leavey became one of the pioneers of the UK’s embryonic computer games industry when he started testing early computer games for a downloading division of BT called Gamestar.

He was then promptly invited to join the small team that set up BT’s highly successful computer games publishing company – Firebird Software – which became a major force in the early days of home computing.   Leavey also wrote the copy for Europe’s first satellite advertisement (transmitted by BT in Europe – it told the world Firebird was coming and encouraged programmers to send him new games).

Firebird insisted on producing original, innovative computer games written in machine code rather than the usual BASIC, displaying screenshots on the front of its packs so that players could see what they were getting for their money, cut the retail price of games by 50 per cent, and, not least, injected a healthy dose of serious, professional marketing into the early days of what was to become one of the most successful business sectors in the world.

Firebird’s fine quality, good value for money games, whose titles included Booty, Elite, and Don’t Buy This, immediately topped the UK charts in every computer mode  (i.e. BBC Micro, Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore’s Vic 20, 64 and 128, etc), and then went on to sell throughout Europe, Australasia and America.

As a result, Leavey got poached to become the first public relations manager for BT’s National Networks division.  Among other things, he helped launch the toll-free (0800) and Premium Call (0898 etc) numbers, originated one of the most successful direct mail-shots ever (22 per cent personal response from the UK’s top 1000 companies) – after being the first person to fire the sales promotion division of Saatchi & Saatchi, won two video awards - for The BT Tower (of which he had become PR manager) and the National Digital Network, and ran the first ever sales promotion on the Venice-Simplon Orient-Express.

He was then invited to join a newly formed division handling all of BT’s advertising and PR, and was the first person to co-ordinate two major British PR agencies (Shandwick and the Quentin Bell Organisation) on one major account: BT’s £2 billion per annum network modernisation programme.

A year or so later, he was invited to become British Telecom International’s first customer events manager and, eventually deputy international sponsorship manager.  During this period he wrote BTI’s first international events strategy, and administered BT’s involvement in the 1989-1990 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

Leavey then left BT in 1990 to become a freelance writer and an independent marketing and PR consultant – his clients include Crown Agents, BT Marine, The Quentin Bell PR Company, The Barry Martin Group, Shandwick PR, BT’s Telecom Technology Showcase, Britain’s National Museum of Cartoon Art, The Tea Council, Thomas Cook, System 3 Arcade Software, Andromeda Publishing, Peterson, Community Systems (part of North London Training and Entertprise Council) – for whom he ran several courses to re-motivate long-term unemployed professionals, and Harrods Ltd (on behalf of JJ Fox (St James’s) Ltd).

Meanwhile, Leavey’s articles (he has covered virtually everything from news, sport, business, travel, and lifestyle to art, film, theatre and restaurant reviews) have since been published by a growing list of publications including Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Independent, The European, Punch (he wrote the ‘Sharing an ashtray’ column for 15 months until the magazine folded in June 2002), Radio Times, Time Out, Drive On, European Businessman, Wine & Spirits International, Classic Cigar, Heathrow International Traveller, Hilton Guest, Literary Review, London’s Evening Standard, Hyatt International, ES magazine, Harrods Magazine, Claridges Book of the Century, Thomas Cook’s Travel Brief and Communique, the DTI’s Briefing on Britain (for the USA) and Taitoshi News (for Japan), Off Licence News, Boz, BBC Holidays, Midweek, and the Belfast Telegraph.

Currently, he is a regular contributor to World Tobacco (as cigars columnist), Classic Travel, Boom (sent to 50,000 UK millionaires) and the Hurlingham Polo Association Book of the Season.  He is also an occasional contributor to Whisky, Wine, SquareMeal, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Belfast Telegraph, and the London Evening Standard.

Leavey has broadcast on many radio and TV programmes around the world, including Sky One, Middle East Business Television, Financial Times TV, BBC 24 Hours, American National Radio, America’s Lighten Up! (presented by Mr Cigar – JL was a regular contributor, during 1999 and 2000 -  to this hour-long programme broadcast live coast-to-coast across America every Saturday to 26 million homes via the Cable Radio Network), CNN, Dominican Republic National TV, Cuban National Radio, BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio Scotland, South African National Radio, BBC World Service, BBC Radio London, GLR, Liberty Radio, ITN News, Isle of Wight Radio, Carlton TV’s London Tonight, and a programme in LWT’s forthcoming Sin City series (due to be broadcast in November 2002).

He has also contributed to BBC Radio 4’s Breakaway, Going Places and Farming Today, (and been featured twice on BBC Radio 4’s Pick of the Week), Channel Four’s Collector’s Lot, BBC2’s Arena (arts programme, on cigars), BBC Radio 2 Fag Ends (an hour-long documentary on the history of smoking), Channel 4’s Banzai, and BBC1’s The Jack Dee Happy Hour, among others. 

Back in 1991, Leavey was the reluctant press officer of the world’s last Soviet Trade & Industry Exhibition (it opened in London on the day the USSR announced it would cease to exist and the immense coverage he organised helped raise enough funds to send the exhibitors, who had arrived in Britain with little real money, to pay for their Aeroflot plane’s fuel and return home). He also researched and wrote the Department of Trade and Industry’s Invest in Britain Bureau’s annual reports for 1993-4 and 1994-5 (distributed via British Embassies and trade representatives round the world – attracting millions of pounds of inward investment into the UK), and contributed to the successful launch of Peterson’s smokers’ magazine, in Dublin.

In 1995, he was launch editor of Taylors’ Corporate Northern Ireland – the first major independent business guide to the province – successfully launched at the Irish Investment Conference in Washington DC that summer, and Belfast.  As a result (one of many), Leavey was invited to be presiding judge of the Institute of Public Relations/BT Northern Ireland Press and Broadcast Awards, in Belfast, in March 2000, March 2001, March 2002 – to date! Fellow judges include John Simpson, Eddie Mair, Bruno Brookes and many other noted British journalists.

In recent years, Leavey has become better known as one of Britain’s most politically incorrect writers – as editor of The FOREST Guide to Smoking in London (which included contributions by the late Auberon Waugh and Jeffrey Bernard) and The FOREST Smokers' Guide to Scotland – the latter successfully launched at the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. 

The world’s first travel guides for smokers, they have ignited serious debate by the world’s media, including Time magazine, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, GQ, Playboy, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman, Die Welt, Pravda and The Sunday Times, among many others. 

He also wrote The Harrods Pocket Guide to Fine Cigars, now available from the cigar department of the world’s most famous store, in Knightsbridge, contributed to the current (2002) edition of The Pipesmoker’s Handbook (published by the UK’s Pipesmokers’ Council) and is featured (twice) in James Walton’s The Faber Book of Smoking, as well as contributing to the The Complete Cigar Book by Anwer Bati.

One of the last people to work with the late Dennis Main Wilson – the renowned, iconoclastic BBC producer of such comedy classics as The Goon Show, Marty (Feldman), Hancock’s Half Hour and Till Death Us Do Part (the American version is better known as All in the Family), Leavey is currently working on a new sitcom with his co-writer, Beverley Legge.