What advice would you give to an aspiring talent booker?
The advice I'd give a young model booker would be to just not be shy about it; don't worry about people having opinions about their approach to things because if you are lucky enough to be in an established agency, there will be somebody there to train you and mentor you. What they want to see in model bookers is a natural spark and that you can get your way out of a terrible situation, but help will be available to you. If you are shy and you are not inspiring your bosses, you are never going to inspire your models. If a young guy starts, everyone will give them the chance, but models are very critical if something goes wrong. You can make one or two mistakes, and then people's patience will dwindle very fast. Booking rooms have been compared to dealing rooms because it's very chaotic. There is a lot of noise; when the phones start, they don't stop, and everybody has to be on the same wavelength around this table, shouting names, shouting fees, shouting details. You have to have a really good memory to be a model booker; you have to write things down and be prepared with the answers when somebody asks you it. Models can be moody people. You are representing, basically, teenagers, and they work incredibly long hours and sometimes they work very hard. You can argue: "Is walking down a catwalk hard?" Essentially, no it isn't, but to do it well is hard, and to maintain that pace when a girl is in a different city three times a week and travelling, you have to be really on top of it. If you give her the wrong detail, it completely ruins her week and as I say, you are dealing with teenagers and they throw strops so if you can't get them out of that strop and give them the right answers, then you'll be out of a job pretty quickly.
