Here is the speech. A unique series. Hero is a young man who cleans abandoned apartments full of garbage and takes care of rats and mice. He even takes corpses to morgues. First episode full of this grim mundanity.
Then dissolve in episode two. The same young man is sitting in a cafe in Edinburgh. He is talking to a staggering journalist. He talks about his life singing a song about poop to Nicola Sturgeon, sending a Tunnock tea cake into space, working with the NBA, collaborating with an English Premier League club, making A View From the Terrace and preparing for a show Eurocup with Martin Compston. and Gordon Smart.
All of this is reckless and wonderfully absurd. But true. For Ian Greenhill, Life of Grime has become a kind of Mad Men of Leith.
‘The work with the council was awful, the worst job you could imagine, so I don’t complain if a client doesn’t like the color of a font. I think, “It’s not a big deal.” It also gives me a little perspective. Maybe I’ll have to go back to that if this all falls through,’ she says.
This is Studio Something, a content agency founded by Greenhill and Jordan Laird 10 years ago. They met at the Leith Agency after Greenhill took off his protective clothing, avoided the chaotic floors, and took an internship. He is now in the ideas business.
Much of this is happening now in the sports field. But ideas can travel and Greenhill, at 35 years old, has always been happy to walk towards a new horizon.
Ian Greenhill has high hopes for his new TV show broadcast during the Euro Cup
Gordon Smart and Martin Compston will present the BBC program
Scottish star Lyndon Dykes will be among those appearing as guests on the show.
Work with big brands such as Tennent’s, Coca Cola and Skyscanner has been complemented by innovative work on topics that need to be inspired.
‘The tea cake was part of a contract with Glasgow Science Centre. We wanted to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics. What better way than to put a bottle of Irn Bru in a bulletproof cap and drop it from a crane? Or sending a Tunnock tea cake into space.
Said candy was placed in a hot air balloon and launched from Houston. In Renfrewshire, of course. Fell in Galloway Forest. All informed and entertaining. This is Greenhill’s mantra.
As a friend of the rock band Frightened Rabbit and a collaborator on some of their video work, he is heavily involved in projects that promote mental health. Scott Hutchinson, the band’s vocalist, died by suicide in 2018. Greenhill’s professional work in mental health is driven by very personal forces.
“I obviously knew Scott,” he says. ‘I am also aware of the challenges of mental health. I consider myself a writer and 90 percent of the time there are doubts. You live in your head most of the time and that can be exhausting. It can consume everything.
However, he is usually motivated by fun. The serious issue of bowel cancer was addressed when he decided to write Poo Song and perform it in front of Sturgeon, then First Minister, and her ministers.
Growing and influential television work has always been inspired by the notion of: “Why not?” Let’s have a try.’ Studio Something is housed in a 14th-century Leith and Greenhill mansion and a merchant had barely finished building an editing room before the BBC commissioned A View From the Terrace, now in its seventh series.
“My first job on a TV show was as an executive producer,” says Greenhill (below). “I didn’t know anything about making a TV show and suddenly I became a producer of a TV show.” This is said with quiet awe rather than vainglorious boasting. He is the living embodiment of the spirit of trying.
What you describe may seem comically amateurish, but it has been franked by the world’s biggest brands. The NBA, the basketball giant, has come to Scotland to produce a series about the sport. “It’s called the ABCs of the NBA,” Greenhill says.
Line of Duty’s Vicky McClure will also appear on the Euros show
Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh to be among several celebrity guests
‘We got the job because a guy who worked with us was impressed with what we were trying to do and recommended us to the NBA. The series seeks to explain the sport and increase its popularity in Europe.
The English Premier League has been violated by Brentford. “We want to tell the story of the club through the fans and to the fans,” he says. ‘One of the episodes is about a fan who is still alive because he suffered a heart attack along with a waiter who knew how to revive him. We brought them together.’
Work has also been done for Football Focus and they have been consulted by the BBC on how to improve fan engagement. “That’s crazy,” she says. ‘The world’s largest broadcaster asks for our opinion? We think we can tell them things.’
Pals Compston and Smart will talk regularly with the Tartan Army
Scotland fans will appear on the BBC program after converging in Germany.
Greenhill previously brought A View From The Terrace to the BBC
A view from the terrace changed the rules of the game. He has a unique look at Scottish football and has established himself solidly. “It’s Marmite,” says Greenhill. “Some love it, some hate it, but I would always rather be involved in something that divided opinion than something that was bland.”
The football work is now expanded for the Euro Cup. Late Night at the Euros with Martin Compston and Gordon Smart starts today on the BBC. The first guest will be Lyndon Dykes. Others include Irvine Welsh and Compston’s Line of Duty co-star Vicky McClure. Once again, it’s all about fun, but the substance is right underneath. A skit about the trip to the Euro Cup also says a lot about the dedication of the fan and the importance of football to the individual.
“I saw it during Covid,” Greenhill says. “My dad is a Hearts season ticket holder and lockdown took the foothold out of his life for a while.”
Soccer is fun, but serious. This could be used as a mantra for Greenhill’s professional endeavors.
‘We work hard to make things that people like. It sounds like nonsense, but it’s what I believe in,” she says.
‘The most important lesson I have learned is that all the mistakes I have made were based on ego. Then I think about my favorite album, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson had the ideas but he got the best people to carry them out. So we may come up with ideas, but we will do our best to make them happen.’
The future is not formed, it is not written. ‘Who knows?’ Greenhill says. “We have some interesting projects, we have some commissions that I can’t talk about yet.”
He usually talks about the company’s success with the following phrase: “If you want to win every game, invent your own sport.” Thus, he has devised a poster that unites an advertising agency with a television production company.
The Edinburgh cafe episode comes to an end. Greenhill stretches and prepares to return to work before heading to Munich, the euros and the noise of the tartan army and the words of Welsh, Dykes, Compston, Smart and so many others.
‘How did this happen?’ he asks. ‘Maybe because we are tenacious and resilient. Maybe because I don’t want to pick up dead bodies again. Cut. Reference titles.