Mortlake, Barnes and Hampstead must have resembled ghost towns as the middle-classes amassed at Chiswick House last Thursday for the House Festival, probably the most sophisticated music festival going. It was appropriate, then, that Walker Media, a classy outfit if ever there was one, chose to host its tenth birthday celebrations there.
The journey that Walker Media has gone is remarkable by any standards and it is to the credit of the tenacity of the founding partners Phil Georgiadis and, the now sadly absent, Christine Walker that they have managed to build a media agency of considerable scale and more importantly with an intelligent planning-led positioning where others have failed (and apparently continue to do so).
The festival itself resembled something like the West Car Park at Twickenham but with better food - Red Wedge it certainly was not. Funds from the event were used to help restore the conservatory rather than going towards striking miners, and rather than shouting obscenities, the most contentious statement came from Sophie Ellis-Bextor who challenged the audience to beat her husband's feat of eating more than four lobsters. But all this seemed to fit Walker Media's unique positioning as a more sophisticated media agency.
