Review: My Name is Charles Saatchi And I Am An Artoholic - The Jewish Chronicle

Charles Saatchi does not give interviews. He is also not appearing in this autumn’s BBC2 reality show in which he helps to discover new British art talent, X-Factor style. So what does this book of his answers to questions from critics and others reveal of this chronically reclusive man?

Interestingly, he is more open about his earlier advertising career than about his role as an art collector.

After working alongside David Puttnam, Ridley Scott and Alan Parker at the legendary agency Collett Dickenson Pearce, which declared happiness to be a cigar called Hamlet and that Heineken refreshed the parts other beers cannot reach, Charles founded Saatchi and Saatchi with his brother Maurice in 1970 and shot to fame with their “Labour isn’t Working” ad for Maggie Thatcher’s 1979 election campaign.

Saatchi is unimpressed with today’s “dim, unsubtle and charmless” political advertising. He is similarly dismissive of the personalities, preferring Simon Cowell to David Cameron and bluntly comparing Gordon Brown to Kellogg’s All Bran as, “you know exactly what you are going to get”.