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Kevin Johnson stands in the chamber of Birmingham city council and takes a deep breath. It is Wednesday 21 June 2006 and the communications specialist is here to give a presentation. He’s done this many times before, as head of regional public affairs for ITV Central, and now as the boss of his own consultancy firm. To a man of Johnson’s capability and experience, this is small fry. What he’s been asked to do is to assess what a new organisation made up of councils across the region should be called. A collective noun, if you will, for West Midlands municipal bodies. Nothing controversial.
Johnson’s conclusion, after several months of analysing data and conducting interviews, crunching numbers and perhaps gazing out across the whole of the region from a penthouse suite in a luxury hotel with a pensive glint in his eye, is that the correct answer is actually the most obvious one. All the evidence points in one direction: Greater Birmingham.
Having made the big reveal, he takes a seat, his work is done. But before he even has time for a self-satisfied swig of his brew, the leader of a Black Country council appears before him. They would like to talk.
And then the problems start — problems perhaps inevitable to face anyone tasked with answering the actually nigh-impossible question of what this 9,708,931,584 square foot patch of Britain should be called. "I know everything you say makes sense. I know you've done a lot of work,” says this anonymous bigwig of Black Country politics, whose name Johnson won’t reveal. “But I don't want to be catching a bus which has got the word Birmingham on it.”
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