Man in a Million

Over a Page One cut of a tweedy, utterly English six-footer named Chris Powell, the headline in London's Daily Sketch trumpeted: WIN THIS MAN! HE'S A WORLD SENSATION! After a four-day buildup and a spate of pictures showing Winnable Powell, with a pipe, a monocle and a succession of simpering show girls, the tabloid Sketch (circ. 1,283,000) finally broke the secret. This "elegant, enterprising, experienced man in a million," said the Sketch, would be rotated--for assignment--among the letter writers who could most convincingly explain what they wanted him to do and why.

Baby Sitting to Cad Kicking. The Sketch's Powell-play was a London summer phenomenon brought on by newspaper circulation managers' frantic efforts to keep their papers selling (the Daily Mail was offering a bus trip to Moscow).

Major Edgar Christopher Charles Elkmsl Powell's availability for trophy purposes is even more characteristic of Britain this summer: 18,000 ex-soldiers are looking for jobs as a result of massive manpower cuts in Britain's armed forces (TIME, Aug. 5).

Rather than "hang around for the bitter end," Sandhurst-bred Major Powell, 49, quit after 28 years in the army. He went to work for a Suez Canal contractor, had been jobless since the British invasion when he wrote a letter to Box F-1794 the Times, in answer to a classified ad for an advertising salesman. Wrote Powell: "I can ride a show jumper or fight a duel. I can swim a river, kick a cad where it hurts--or play chess with a debutante. I once shot a bandit in Sumatra. I could do anything from baby sitting to playing a balalaika in the Andes."

Daydream `a Deux. Box F-1794 turned out to be the Sketch, which promptly cooked up the Win-A-Man stunt, put Powell on the payroll as its "Bowler-Hat Superman." Thousands of letters poured in to the paper, from spinsters, jokers (one chap needed a chap to trim his corns), enlisted men who wanted an officer to serve them breakfast.

The Sketch last week assigned its married superman to bring a wife back to her husband (she promised to think about it), appointed him Daddy-for-a-Day to a ten-year-old boy whose father was in the hospital, packed him off to Paris for a daydream `a deux with a pretty 20-year-old who wrote that she wanted "to go shopping with a man like him and have him take me to lunch at Paris' No. 1 restaurant." Though his first missions (he spends from a day to a week on each one) proved more of a challenge to Powell's patience than his derring-do, the Sketch was confident that its man in a million would recruit readers by the thousands.

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