Out of the Cardboard Suitcase

Next instalment of Ivan Berg’s podcast memoir: learning new skills, becoming Top Gear Magazine’s resident 'datadad' and creating the very first BBC website. 

The E-Bike is invented 35 years too early, Inge is in the News Of The World, and Mellie writes a Punk Rock hit. There's jazz at Pizza Express, Ivan records Xaviera Hollander (The Happy Hooker), and does a deal with Robert Maxwell ...

Ivan has fun recording ABBA in Hindi, is first in the field with home and educational software for Commodore Computers and is too early again, with 'Singing Birthday Cards'

Ivan Berg's podcast memoir Episode 16 : Too far ahead for The Times ? (and ATV too) Ivan and Inge's next round of business ventures: audio on demand, 1970s style - a brief foray into the world of art, and how Colonel Gaddafi saved the company. 

 Ivan is fired again ... but undaunted moves into new ventures - the music and recording studio business and a partnership with one of the country’s most powerful newspapers.

In which Ivan's business career takes inventive new directions ... he creates the 'Berg Box', designs and introduces the UK's first commercial slot car raceways, and more. He and Inge become parents, and on his first trip to Inge's homeland, he meets parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins - none of whom speak English

In which Ivan falls in love with Inge... only to learn she has to return to Denmark, as her permission to stay is ending. He asks her to marry him, and to his surprise she agrees. They've known each other for a few months. The wedding is arranged so quickly noone remembers to bring a camera. But the new wife nearly becomes a widow when Ivan is rushed to hospital...

The ups and downs of a young writer's career. From being one of the best paid writers one year... to struggling the next.  The blurring of fact and fiction, in Fleet Street, and when interviewing Benny Hill. And a chance move to Hampstead that will change Ivan's life: though he doesn't realise at the time.  

Ivan lands on his feet in the RAF. A comfortable posting in central London, allowed to live 'out', with plenty of time to write. He helps Renee and Sam with a short lived moneymaking venture - gets a literary agent and sells his own TV series. Perhaps it's down to the lucky RAF desk ?  

Ivan finds life can be tough outside the merchant navy, even when you’re working with Britain’s answer to Elvis Presley on a book and TV series. No development money! Hard up, missing the Cunard perks, he fails to dodge National Service in the RAF...but it’s not as bad as he thought!