Col Needham's Story.

There he is – the man himself: one Col Needham; the man a lot of people aspire to be.

At one time everybody wanted to be Clark Gable then other movie stars or pop singers of the day; I wanted to be Elvis, Steve McQueen or James Dean then later Robert De Niro and then James Joyce. Of course as a child I wanted to be Superman, Roy Rogers and then Geoff Duke!!

Women wanted to be the female equivalent - shall we say Marilyn Monroe, then Marilyn Monroe again, then Gertrude Stein.

Others wanted to be sports figures like Joe DiMaggio, George Best and now David Beckham but that man above has taken over; and who is he? He is Col Needham?

Col was born in Manchester on January 26^th 1967; I don't know if his birth name is Colin but he is known as 'Col' and he is one of the hand full of multi-billionaires who have made their fortune by accident, out of a hobby or a convenience they invented. I don't mean a public convenience, like a public lavatory, I mean something they made or adapted or, in the case of Col, wrote a computer programme for.

I made a movie in the 90s in the north of England and next to the place where we shot the scenes, there was a young man listing every film he had ever seen; he was entering the titles, the stars, the directors and the writers and he was filing them away. This was in Cheshire and I often wondered if that was Col; the time line seems to fit.

Because that's what Col, himself, says he was doing around that time!

He wanted the information for easy reference when he wanted to find something. Just the fella to meet at a party eh?

Rather like the driver who always has spare bulbs, spare tyres, a full petrol can in the boot so that when he breaks down he can look rather smugly at everybody else. The last time I had a puncture it was a 'double blow out' in Los Angeles when my two off side wheels went down a sharp pot hole; so my spare was no good as I needed two and to make matters worse, I had just watched a documentary on TV which said that two tyres blowing out in pot holes in Los Angeles was very common after huge downpours of rain!!

Back to Col; he was doing all this stuff before the advent of the world wide web so he invented a little data base to share with friends and to make easy access to it he wrote the computer programme.

When the Internet started someone contacted him and said his site was great but needed writers' details as well so that particular person was asked to put the writers information in; then someone said the site needed composer information and that someone was recruited too.

Of course this led to the giant Internet Movie Data Base which is what it is now – the IMDb – or the imdB (whatever).

In 1998 he sold it to Amazon but he still runs the company and is the CEO or the Managing Director – he runs it with a staff of between 100 – 200 from his office just outside Bristol.

I want to ask one question: why would Amazon want to buy it? Why did Ebay buy everything from Paypal to Skype? Why did Google buy YouTube? Why do they want so much power.

I know why Amazon bought Love Film, because they couldn't buy Netflix; Netflix was started by a couple of computer geeks from Silicon Valley in Northern California (computer guy again) who returned a DVD back to Blockbusters and had to pay a $40 late fee so decided to start his own little business with a partner and what a little business it turned out to be. It's now one of the biggest companies of its kind anywhere in the world – all because he kept Apollo 13 too long and Blockbusters were too greedy. That's the one I'm really pleased about and I'm glad they didn't sell it to the man.

One mistake may I point out to Netflix – you didn't design your envelope too well as you had to put that little sticker to keep the DVD in the packet. You can't see it in the picture but there's another sheet of paper you have to tear off before returning the DVD.

 But back to Mister Needham the IMDb boss: casting was always run by people in the business and records kept by people like The Academy Players and Spotlight but now the casting directors in Los Angeles use the IMDb and that might happen in the UK soon who knows? It'll mean the British actors will have to put their head shots up on there like they do in the USA.

Before I close I have to thank all those who sent emails to me following my last post commemorating my dad's centenary – it was appreciated and I'm glad you liked it.

But who was the guy keeping all the film records if it wasn't the Col?

My second novel has just been published in paperback and is available from Amazon – here we are - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan/dp/1482691973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363609040&sr=8-1 that's for the UK and this is for the USA:

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan/dp/1482691973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363613415&sr=8-1&keywords=who+was+gertie+ford%3F You'll have to copy and paste.