Gentlemen, I give you ... by chartered-one

GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU…

Chris Wainwright With A Little Help From

Martyn Best

Copyright © 2021 Chris Wainwright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 9781838460211 (Paperback) ISBN: 9781838460204 (E-book)

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR

THE ACTUAL FOREWORD BY MARTYN BEST

A FAMOUS FORWARD’S FOREWORD BY ROB WAINWRIGHT

A DEDICATION FROM JILL DOUGLAS - CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF MY NAME’5 DODDIE FOUNDATION

THE BOOK FINALLY BEGINS CHAPTER ONE - DINNER NEAR BRIGANDS ______________ 16 CHAPTER TWO – A ROOM FULL OF LEGENDS ____________ 21 CHAPTER THREE - BARRY OWEN _______________________ 27 CHAPTER FOUR - GEOFF MASON AND HIS SONS _________ 39 CHAPTER FIVE - PETER BULLIVANT ____________________ 50 CHAPTER SIX - ANDY PRITCHARD ______________________ 58 CHAPTER SEVEN - MALCOLM WALKER __________________ 70 CHAPTER EIGHT - JIM DAVIES __________________________ 84 CHAPTER NINE – JOHNNY PRESTT ______________________ 91 CHAPTER TEN - RAY BAILEY __________________________ 100 CHAPTER ELEVEN - NIGEL AND JEREMY WOODWARD __ 118 CHAPTER TWELVE - RICHARD KIRK ___________________ 126 CHAPTER THIRTEEN - STEPHEN LAING AND OTHER ACCOUNTANTS ______________________________________ 135 CHAPTER FOURTEEN - GRAEME MARRS AND OTHER PARK PRESIDENTS _________________________________________ 143 CHAPTER FIFTEEN - POSTSCRIPT (SPELT RIGHT) ________ 154 CHAPTER SIXTEEN - MY FINAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS __ 158

HOW TO VIEW THIS BOOK This book can be seen in two ways: Firstly, as an engaging and witty behind-the-scenes insight into the enduring characters that dominated business life in Liverpool from the 1970’s. As the back of the book heralds, the characters within this book played a key, and vital part in the renaissance of Liverpool, once the second city of the Empire, but then teetering on the brink of terminal decline. or … Secondly, as coffees, butties, ale, nights out, laughs, phone calls, what have you, with various mates and duffers from Liverpool and the surrounding area. Either way, it announces Chris Wainwright into the publishing world, and his unique writing style and insights will either inspire you, or make you regret this purchase. However, that regret will be totally mitigated by the knowledge of the fine cause that this book represents. ‘Laugh out loud unfunny’: The Times (Wirral Times, that is) ‘I could do better – and there are not enough dragons.’ Toby, aged 10 ‘I feel this young man has a much better second book to come’ The author’s mother: Beth. ‘I hate the word foreword so much I almost demoted it to a backword or maybe an aftword’: The author ‘A book never gets finished it just gets published’ Anon In answer to the first line on this page – I am just glad that you are.

Foreword by the Author Well! This is a novelty. I never thought I would ever be writing a foreword to a book and that it might also be my very own book. For one thing, I do not particularly like forewords in books. I am, as it happens, very fond of them in rugby union, but there they are forwards not forewords and that spelling makes for two very different phenomena. On the subject of writing and forewords, I need to emphasise that I really enjoy books and reading, but I always feel during that process, that I want for some reason to get through it as quickly as I can. I’m enjoying it, really, but to me it’s almost like a competition to get through to the end of the book. A tiny race evolves in my head and it won’t go away. By way of example and to show you how this manifests itself, I will constantly turn books on their sides and glance at how far I am through them. I also tend to look and count ahead to find out how many pages there are altogether in any one book and how far through I have reached. When I hit the milestone of halfway it’s a bit of a celebration and I then look again at it sideways and feel smug to see the big already-read chunk growing and the piece still left to read diminishing. Like I say though, I really do love reading. I occasionally stop a while and rub my hand over the pages smoothing them down. I love that feeling of the different types of paper. So it seems odd that I also appear to be wanting to get it all over with. Does everyone do this or is there something wrong with me? Because of what I have just told you, a foreword, especially a long winded one, is a bit of a set-back. A bit like being in group H for the London marathon when you know you won’t get to cross the start line until about 40 minutes after the starter’s gun first went off and the elite athletes shot off at a pace (a pace that you can no longer even keep up for 100 metres) It’s a bit like climbing out of a pit and it’s almost cruel. ‘Come on, get on with it’, I’m musing to myself (as you might also well be muttering) as I am ploughing through forewords. ‘Let’s get to the proper book’.

At the same time, I also don’t like to skip them in case there is something really important and seriously relevant in the scene setting and some such that I would miss if I skipped it. There never bloody is…… So, sorry to anyone who feels the same, but here we are and ironically, I’ve got to write my own foreword for this book and aggravate like-minded people in the process. I must pause here and blame ‘my publisher’ (or actually my originally intended publisher, as things, as you will learn have moved on) as it was he that wanted me to create this additional section: he wants some themes. And actually, while we are pausing, I also never thought I would write the words ‘my publisher’ any time at all so this is all great fun and we are breaking new ground. I’m sounding so accomplished and well to do but I really am not. However, I can’t wait to tell my butler. Only kidding, He’s away on holiday. If like me then, you don’t like forewords, then this set-back is indeed the fault of Bob Foulke of the extremely well named Caxton Publishers and it was him that told me to write it. (However, if you do like it, it was all my idea). He wrote to me after I sent the initial draft to him. At the time I was ready to ditch the idea of the book completely, but he said he had ‘thoroughly enjoyed it’. “My word”, I thought, “he’s easily pleased.” This was good timing and his email inspired me and was the initial reason I knuckled down to finish writing it (and the coronavirus arriving also contributed in giving me extra focus and extra time towards the end). I was otherwise going to call it a day. In fact, I think I did actually call it a day, until what you might call my new, current, and hopefully enduring publisher, persistent editor, and sidekick, Martyn Best, gave me the final impetus, with his immortal words: “Just get the blooming thing published, Chris!” If the book bombs that means he was telling porkies about liking it just to get his name with greater prominence here and there throughout the book.

But getting back on track, he did also say that as well as themes, it needed a purpose, and he went on to say that it also needed a preamble about me and why I came to write it. He doesn’t want much does he? I think he asked for some other stuff too but I wasn’t listening by then. Well let’s just work through his requests shall we: what he has asked me for should be pretty easy.

Why have I written it? Well, I don’t know do I, I just thought it was a good idea. I thought all the old fossils referred to in this book are truly lovely people who have each had remarkable lives which have crossed over each other’s paths constantly and productively. They have done a lot for Liverpool, for the region and for charity and they have remained decent and honest during the whole process creating lasting friendships and, yes, that’s about it. They have worked hard and played hard, so the tales they tell are ‘legendary’, often comic, always self-effacing and nearly always true. They are tales that must be retold and preserved and importantly I will publish it for charity, so I don’t feel a little odd about just writing their material on a whim. What else did Bob and then Martyn want? ‘What about you?’, they both, rather curiously in my view, demanded. Well, that is a tough one. I really haven’t a clue on that one. Even at my advanced years, I don’t really know ‘me’ all that well. Maybe I should get someone else to write that bit. Ha, I see that Martyn has done that in the next section, but that obviously doesn’t let me off the hook. I do suspect that my desire to write it was partly driven by my odd need to be liked and, now I am getting older, maybe remembered at the same time as well? A serious flaw probably but I think it’s quite a common one – and fairly harmless, I’d say. And, part of my rationale is the one thing that is lodged in my character: I always see the comic side of everything. In fact, the comic side always springs to my mind and always almost instantaneously. It is the bane of my life and it seems like the thoughts are sometimes there before I can even think them. And, finally, I guess I am a show-off. It is hard to determine what you are like as person, but that’s my best shot at me. I am sure I was like that from an early age. I know that I put a bikini on when I was 9 and entered a beauty pageant and it’s just carried on from there. (I came second incidentally and the judge said it would have been better if I had been a boy dressed as a girl). For the record, most of the time I can now keep most of these ‘humorous’ thoughts to myself in case I upset someone or maybe release them at the wrong time or place causing some damage or offence.

I don’t have the time to audit them, as it were, before I say them, so I now try to block what I was going to say just in case. So, I suppose I partly wrote a book so I might be remembered for a while longer, even if it’s not much longer. Maybe that remembrance might now be along the lines: ‘Remember that Wainwright chap who self-published a book and slept on the leftover copies for the rest of his life in a bedsit in Birkenhead.’ My form teacher in school Mr John Aveyard wrote in my report at the end of my first term in senior school in Brecon Mid Wales as follows: ‘Chris has quickly established himself as the school buffoon’. You were right Mr Aveyard, Sir, and I don’t think it was a title that I relinquished during any stage at that school, and I think I have held similar roles ever since. But don’t you think we also need a nice easy book to read in this time of global warming, Brexit, social media and Covid. I herewith deliver just that, I hope. No big words, no great lectures and plenty of embarrassingly 1960s, 1970’s and 1980’s inspired basic humour. It’s not about how to be better at stuff, it’s not tips for business and it’s not about getting fitter: it’s just a laugh I hope. Oh – and a fond nod towards some wonderful characters. Read one chapter per night and fall asleep with it on your chest with a smile on your face. You should get 15 nights’ happiness and you will have been doing something for charity! Sorry, Bob and Martyn - will that do? PS: Bob should have been a builder, much catchier. Not sure about Martyn, but as he is now the editor, I can’t be rude as he’ll just edit it out. So now that’s the publisher’s demands sorted, I might as well prolong your journey to Chapter 1 with a couple of other notes before we start. The first would be to point out to you that after re-reading this effort twice, I did actually give up again. I didn’t like it and it was a very hard thing to finish. Actually, I don’t think I will ever consider it finished. In fact, in the last review with Martyn, when all he wanted

was my final approval, I started adding littles sections here, and further witticisms there. “Just get the blooming thing published, Chris!” I think I have a condition of some sort. It wouldn’t be easy to name it as it would be called something like: ‘Get the bulk of something done quickly, almost 90% and then be unable to finish it for some strange reason for absolutely bloody years afterwards -syndrome’. That condition has made the finishing of the book very hard but the feeling that it isn’t a good read is also nagging me and has dragged it all out, which is another one of the reasons in my deciding to publish it for charity. I also felt that I owe all the material to the guys in it and they would like the charity side also, as they are all massive donors to charities. I am hoping against hope that it turns out that the book is amusing, that you like it and as a result you might buy my next book. All I have to do is re-write the draft I wrote 28 years ago of that first one. (Oh lord, will I get it done ever, with that condition I mentioned.) Anyway, when I was beset with that feeling that the book was poor, I came up with a cunning plan to finish it. I sent it around to the protagonists and to a handful of other people who were on the verge of being included, to get feedback. I would invite them to read the draft, then I would incorporate some of their further comments, feedback, anecdotes and so on into the book. They would also correct a lot of factual inaccuracies. I needed to make sure all the main characters were happy with what I’d written. If they were not happy in any way then you, as the reader, will never have known what it was that they didn’t like because I will have altered it. The process would sort of get me the all-clear on the content. ‘You can’t say that about him, it was me that did that!’ was the sort of reply I had hoped for. In the event I hardly got any feedback: they just all said it was great and they were happy for it to go ahead. So, I think that just about covers my legal exposure. They didn’t read it, did they? Anyway, you will see, so get on and read it and tell others about it.

It’s also a good charity. I’ve done my best.

The actual foreword by Martyn Best Like so many people in this book, I have known the author for decades and decades, and I have known many of those people for a similar time. I can therefore see why Chris embarked on this project, as the lives and times that were had, and are still being had, are certainly worth preserving for posterity and for sharing with those who weren’t there. Many fine accomplishments are noted, and tales of derring-do are laced with the ingredients of honesty, integrity, and humour. And so, to my few words. It is actually a general publishing guideline, as Bob would have told the author, that an independent writer, ie, independent of the author, pens the foreword, so I am not really sure what Chris has been up to in the previous section – doing his own foreword.

The Author with his Official Foreword writer – both clearly supported by Merlot.

Nor am I sure why he invited me – deeply honoured as I am – to craft this final impediment to you starting this fine tome. The answer can only be found in the fact that it was me, dear reader, who pointed out to him the difference between a book foreword, and a rugby forward. The clue, I informed him, was in the spelling of the second part of the word, and this revelation was embraced with delight by Christopher. The only other reason for my meanderings at this point could be that I would not be able to say a bad word against the fellow. That though doesn’t make me unique, and so it is probably the foreword/forward reason why I am here. In terms of how I could describe the author – a complete lack of disingenuity, supported by a fine sense of right and wrong. Chris is someone you’d want in your pack, and alongside you when you needed a solid supporter. He’d be your luxury item on Desert Island Discs. He’s someone whose sense of fair play will shine through in this book as he highlights those who

also share that trait. He’s resilient, ebullient and persistent, and he does indeed bring his much-heralded sense of humour and sense of the absurd to the fore wherever he is. My first encounter with Chris was in the early 1980’s in the very warm and joyous offices of Arthur Young McClelland Moores just as Chris was completing his accounting studies. This was a grand achievement, as one of my first impressions of Chris was that he wasn’t really that bothered, but perseverance overcame the other distractions, and he continued to add his great charm to the culture of the office. We have both diverted from the traditional accounting path, but both know for sure, when pressed to admit, that this early period in our career set us on a good track. It has enabled us to meet so many great people, and be influenced by those with the proper qualities. Chris’s own accomplishments will probably be recorded in his third book, and so his purpose of building up a loyal readership is rather smart. That future book should be a best seller and will regale us with tales of smart investments, tenacious dealings, diverse interests, and the creation of a fascinating life full of great friends and, of course, a wonderful family. I am delighted to be here at the start of another undoubtedly remarkable phase in his career. He would indeed be a fine candidate for inclusion in the book in his own right, but astute chap that he is, in zelig-like fashion you will find him everywhere. He’s a giant standing on the shoulders of other giants, and I hope you enjoy the following string of sincere anecdotes. All I can now say is – please start reading – and enjoy this lovely book.

About Martyn Best Chartered Accountant, entrepreneur, lover of fine wines and good company, businessman, charity fundraiser, cyclist, Associate Director of Tranmere Rovers Football Club, founder and CEO of Document Direct, CEO of Legal RSS, Trustee of Tranmere Rovers in the Community, the Royal Court Theatre Liverpool and National Youth Advocacy Service, former trophy-winning Chairman of Everton Tigers basketball club and Past President of the Liverpool Society of Chartered Accountants and founder and publisher of CharteredONE. A very proud father of four lovely children, and also mentioned fleetingly in the latest worldwide bestseller, “Gentlemen, I give you …”

A Famous Forward’s Foreword by Rob Wainwright I am most delighted to write a forward's foreword to this beautifully presented gathering of reminiscences and anecdotes from Scouser Yesteryear. From an early age, I have looked up to and been kept amused by my Big Boy Cousin, Chris. And when I say kept amused, I do not mean mildly diverted, I refer to the full shebang, weeping with laughter, rolling on the floor, food for the soul type of mirth. Some of his humour must have rubbed off on me, as top of my list of must-have attributes I look for in a person, right up there with honesty and integrity, is an ability to laugh at the world, and more particularly themselves, where required. And I see this as possibly my greatest strength, and probably my greatest weakness as well. The former as levity does hugely enrich life. The latter, as sometimes filters fail and one sees humour when humour is not appropriate or necessarily welcome. My wife will back me up on this. Naturally I see this as Chris's fault.

Rob Wainwright Former Rugby Captain of Scotland and of the British & Irish Lions.

PS - Not only have I been truly proud of Chris in writing this book, and of inviting me to write a few words, but, on behalf of my dear pal, teammate, and irrepressible character Doddie Weir, I want to give my deepest thanks to Chris and Martyn for dedicating this book to and helping raise funds for My Names’5 Doddie Foundation. Now that you have a copy of the book in your hands, I also thank you for buying it and as a result helping promote the good work that the Foundation does.

A few words from Jill Douglas-Chief Executive Officer of MY NAME’5 DODDIE FOUNDATION We are delighted that Chris has chosen to support My Name'5 Doddie Foundation with the launch of his first book, “Gentlemen, I give you …”. Doddie and everyone at the Foundation wish Chris much success as he enters the world of publishing and he is clearly destined for a bright future as an author. I am sure everyone will enjoy "Gentlemen, I give you...." and the stories and madcap adventures described in the book. My Name'5 Doddie Foundation has received incredible support since its launch in 2017 and continues to invest in research to find meaningful treatments and work towards finding a cure for motor neuron disease. In addition, we support people with MND and their families, to help them live as fulfilled a life as possible. This is only possible with your help and thank you for being part of Doddie's story too. Jill Douglas, CEO.

Chapter One - Dinner near Brigands It really was quite an extraordinary room. The reason I say that is that all the things in it, such as the furniture, the pictures, the carpets and yes even actually the gathered people were pretty ordinary but, and this is the odd bit, the combined effect of them all together was sort of extra-ordinary. It was all old stuff, mostly threadbare and tatty and yes, again, that does include the people, yet somehow it was so very …. sort of…classy. Sophisticated. Affluent. I was sat in a very old lounge in North Wales. The wooden floor was the original uneven dark wood boards and there was an ancient rug in the middle, with a lot of full blood red colour in it and some parts that were worn almost completely through. The whole room seem to slant this way and that as the floorboards were extremely ancient and warped. In the centre of the room to the outside wall, there was a magnificent fire blazing away and I shuffled across the uneven polished timbers, a bit like I was at sea, to sink into a very deep and comfortable leather chair. It swallowed me up with consummate ease. It did feel unusual with no shoes on, that’s why I had found walking across the room difficult, but I had obviously had to leave my huge dirty wellington boots on the doorstep. Anyway, I sat back and exhaled. I was very aware that my white hairy legs were now protruding over the top of my mustard-coloured shooting socks but below my brown tweed plus fours that had thin blue and red lines running through them. I thought to myself how a snooze would be just the job right now. Having been out in the cold wild blustery wind all morning, this room had ‘cat nap’ written all over it. However, right at that moment I had to jump back out of that lovely deep chair when a very pretty young country lass walked through the hall door and up to the gate-leg table in the corner by the window. Looking up to where she was, the end of the room appeared to be about two foot higher than where I was.

The table there was heavily laden with bottles and glasses. She asked me if I would like a drink. My reply was immediate, as I had already thought through what I would have when asked: ‘An alcohol free but spicy Bloody Mary please. This didn’t sound like me. I don’t just mean that I would normally drink alcohol but that it actually sounded a lot posher. This does seem to happen to me quite a lot. I appear to seamlessly adapt the accent of whoever I am in direct contact with and for no reason. There we go again, that sounds posh! When I go down from where I now live in Birkenhead to my very first rugby club at Talgarth in South Wales where I spent most of my teenage years, I am told by anyone that comes along with me that I have suddenly developed a noticeable Welsh twang. Anyone who might have come along from the Merseyside region interrupts me along the following lines: ’Err, what’s up with your voice mate, you’ve gone all boyos? You’ll be fancying sheep next!’ If I then reply to their comment, the Welsh lads present will launch into a mimic, generally in unison, of my now apparent scouse twang. I can’t hear any of this at all and I can’t understand how on earth I can have two accents at once in consecutive sentences. ‘Eh calm down’, all the Welsh contingent chant. and ‘who are you looking at?’. Anyway, back in the cosy lounge, I watched the lovely lass make the requested Bloody Mary. She was a magnificent example of a country lass, even her hands were perfect. She was so rosy cheeked and so healthy looking. I did wonder if there wasn’t anything sporty that she couldn’t thrash me at! And she made a good drink too, the Bloody Mary was an absolute clonker. Spicy and rich and it burned its way down my throat and into my rotund tum. After last nights’ supper at Bettwys Hall, which as usual had involved one or two too many alcoholic beverages and a legendary steak, this was just what I needed. It was a shame that I couldn’t have a proper Bloody Mary because it would have been an ideal cure for the previous night and that, by the way, does work. Later on though I would be driving the couple of hours home over the mountains back to Birkenhead.

I would be tired enough as it was without the additional soporific effects of just one drink. I was in Brigands by the way, in the hills above Dolgellau near a place called Dinas Mawddwy. I leant back to my chair, drink in hand and looked out of the misshapen window at the misty Welsh hills over and above the roofs of the assembled vehicles belonging to the party. The Range Rovers, Q7s, even a Porsche and at the very far end my, at the time, 13-year-old Nissan Terrano. Still quite shiny but probably worth about a grand. Was it actually hiding in embarrassment from the other vehicles like a stray donkey at the Grand National? Maybe, but I loved the old girl and also could never really see the point in flash and/or new cars. Couldn’t afford them either. This mansion of a house was up the hill slightly and set in its own huge grounds, with a sweeping drive lined with enormous dense rhododendrons. It was white and I guess Victorian, a country pile from the largely bygone era of servants and landed gentry. I thought on the spur of the moment that I would pop to the car and put my shoes on as it would make me feel a hell of a lot more comfortable at lunch. I rushed out and back to carry out this manoeuvre and the whole party was now assembled in that same small room around the fire and generally also drinking Bloody Marys. They were probably alcohol based as most of them there that day had drivers for the day. I did worry how strong the old floor was but it been there centuries, so I dismissed the thought. All now rosy cheeked and all dressed in very splendid country kit, they chatted about the morning’s shooting. How high the birds were, how hard they were to shoot and how well ‘young’ Johnny (Prestt) had done in hitting two birds with two shots at an almost impossible height. ‘Young’ Johnny was actually about 61 at that point, so he was not that young, but he was definitely below the average age in the room. He is also quite short (5ft 2 inches I believe he told me adding ‘I’ve bloody shrunk even more!’) hence the achievement was all that more remarkable as he had been shooting from one and a quarter feet below me. Quite a disadvantage. More on Johnny later, he is a right character and has his own chapter, numbered 9.

Now suddenly, here’s Barry Owen in full flight, quite a sight to see. Barry must be in his 70s, is over six foot and now has white hair and tanned skin. He must have been a handsome devil when he was younger. He looks a little bit like Robert Redford, but he has worn much better than the film star. Barry is one of the two founders of property behemoth Mason Owen and a well-known figure in Liverpool and the North West property world. He has a story for every occasion and, unlike many folks in their advancing years, these stories are actually interesting and amusing. Barry is a very likeable man and like me he also has six kids, so we have a lot of notes to compare. ‘Do you remember that classic tale at the something or other shoot with the earl of thingy?’ Barry commenced, sort of asking the room in general it seemed. ‘You’ll have to be a bit more specific with that one Barry’, interrupted Jim Davies (also the founder of a huge business, DWF, and also more on him later in chapter 8). Jim’s comment caused an outburst of general hilarity, but Barry didn’t break stride. ‘With that chap from a famous pop band………’, he continued. Jim was with him now: ‘Oh Yes indeed, that was a cracker, Barry. Mark… er……… Knopfler’ ‘yes, well remembered, Jim. Jim, you tell it, Jim, go on.’ said Barry. I think Jim was able to get about six words out, something about it being down at the shoot in Mold or similar, before Barry seamlessly interrupted him and took over again. ‘It was the Welshpool shoot with that Duke of thingy’ he continued, ‘a cracking host and a great shot, his wife had been married to so and so who’s eldest son went to Harrow and got a boxing blue.’ Jonny had a point here to add: ‘it was Eton, Barry, he accidentally shot his French teacher at Bisley or Sandhurst.’ Barry heard none of this: ‘Anyway, one of the guests brought another guest to the shoot called Mark Knopfler. In a pop band or some such. Now the Duke didn’t know who everyone was at his own shooting day as he had invited guests and had let them invite their own ‘plus one’ in turn.

‘It was a great day indeed, he did really great days, didn’t he?’ said Jim, maybe wondering if he might get the story telling roll back. No chance. ‘It was a magnificent day indeed Jim,’ continued Barry and the Duke summoned over one of his lackies: ‘Who’s that over there, old boy?’ he asked, ‘with the denim clobber on? With all the greasy hair, bit scruffy?’’ The reply came that it was Mark Knopfler. Pause. ‘Right, tell me more, I don’t know him’, the Duke had then asked. ‘Well, he’s in Dire Straits your lordship.’ ‘Oh, is he indeed?’ replied the now intrigued Duke, ‘Good lord’. As you can all now anticipate, the Duke soon made his way over to the legend Mark Knopfler and engaged him in a quite unusual conversation which went something like: ‘Hello Mark, I’m the Duke of whatsit, pleased to meet you old chap. I’ve just been chatting to my pal over there. Look, old boy, cut to the chase, I am very sorry to hear that you are in dire straits and if there is anything I can do to help please let me know. Job leads and so on, you know the script, just say the word.’ The present room erupted in laughter. I made a mental note that despite never remembering funny stories until years later I really, really must try and remember this particular one. As it happens, I didn’t really remember it but heard it told again a few weeks later but this time with completely different names, locations and so on. But it really doesn’t matter as all the narrative is probably completely made up anyway. Nevertheless, on the grounds that I have been in the company of all the people in this book on many occasions since that shoot at Brigands and I have heard myriad different versions of the tale, I am leaving it as it is. If you wanted accuracy in this book hard luck and no, you can’t have your money back.

Chapter Two – A room full of Legends The peals of laughter died down and shortly after we filtered through into another equally splendid room for ‘luncheon’. What a magnificent table I thought as I sat down, eyes still wet from Barry’s tale. Not just the huge antique wooden thing straining under the mounds of home grown produce, wine and cheese and so forth, but the human tableaux of the guests. Here was an assembly of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs, most of them multi- millionaires and then, of course……. Er…….. me. How did I come to be in their company? I was after all, and I believe I invented this word, an entremanure rather than an entrepreneur. Some of them were actually household names, but all of them were also blessed with a quite remarkable life story and a not inconsiderable wit and wealth. Yes, I actually did wonder what I was doing there. But then, when I think of it, I suppose it was only because I am a mate of Andy Pritchard (see his own chapter 6), who arranged this day, that I sneaked in as the token poor chap, scruff etc. Some sort of modern-day village idiot possibly or jester even? I sensed that I am really very different in so many more ways to all of the others in the room. I’ve been a businessman and I’ve tried to be an entrepreneur, but I haven’t been as successful as most of them. (I was successful for 20 minutes in 2005 but that’s a different story) For periods of my life I did actually coin for myself the epithet ‘entre-manure’ and I will leave you to work that one out. This word will end up in the OED, my one claim to fame. Entre-manure: epithet alluding to a businessman whose dealings don’t go exactly to plan and go to manure most of the time. Rhymes with entrepreneur which is generally deemed as a successful description. Intimation is that the individual’s efforts have all gone to cow poop. Of course, that state of affairs might still change and of course all of the assembled group have had failures and of course bad times (as that is what makes a truly savvy businessman) but there were also so many other ways in which I differed. I did feel that I was the infamous ‘black sheep’.

So when, for example, they are telling tales of family matters, it is often their grandkids they might refer to. I, however, have got young kids the same age as their grandkids due to a bit of a late start in life. It’s much to their amusement that I have six kids aged from 24 down to 11 (it was actually 18 and 6 when I started writing) and that the eleven-year-old has proved to be the hardest one to manage out of all of them. Maybe more on him later, if I get a chance, probably not though as his language isn’t suitable for this book. But in so many other ways too. They all know the names of all the wines, the cuts of meat., they know how to fish and shoot. I have done all these things and generally quite competently but the following day all the detail has gone out of my head. They know the engines that go in the greatest cars on the planet, and why don’t I want a fancy car even if I had the means, and why would I rather get a bargain that runs well? Anyway - I am going to assume for my sanity that I am normal and they are all over achievers giving me this complex. Thankfully Jim Davies must have seen me daydreaming: ‘Shooting very well today, there, young Christopher’. ‘I don’t know about that Jim’ I replied with that old Etonian twang inexplicably returning to my voice. ‘You’re just being modest Old Boy; it was good to see’. Our attention was then diverted before we could continue our chat. Across from me, over the hunting themed table mats, the shiny silver cutlery, the spotless cut glass, and the opened bottles of both white and red wine (that I should really try and learn the names of one day) there was much activity. Malcolm Walker, the co-founder of the Iceland Frozen Foods business (chapter 7), is being handed copies of his own recently published book for him to sign and maybe add a personal note. He started the company in 1971 and it had grown to 750 odd stores and an annual turnover of £2 zillion billion. Don’t quote me on those numbers by the way. Most of the other guests have brought their own hard back copy along with them for his signing. I realised with yet more embarrassment that I have a paperback

with me for the same purpose. The embarrassment just keeps on coming and coming. Marvellous, I’m going to get even more stick. A hardback never even occurred to me, such an expense – though I do hope that hasn’t prevented you from avoiding my mistake. As it came to my turn to stand over him while he signed it, he saw the soft copy and muttered quietly to me ‘cheapskate’ without looking up or breaking stride. I felt I should maybe tell him I had got it half price, but it didn’t seem the right time. He wrote in it, after several long seconds of contemplation: ‘To Chris, why did you ever leave? Best wishes, Malcolm’

Now, just for the record I will always assume that he meant: ‘If you had stayed you would have made it to be my sidekick and would be a multimillionaire by now instead of that Andy Pritchard (see again chapter 6) who would be your assistant instead of the wealthy self-made man he now is today’. But then I do have flights of fancy and delusions of grandeur. History tells us that Andy has risen all the way to the top and became CEO alongside Malcolm, and then presided over another successful chapter in Iceland’s history. Lucky for him that I left Iceland then, isn’t it? I have to acknowledge that it is possible that Malcolm’s scribbles might alternatively have meant:

‘Why did you leave you daft bugger? You had a perfectly good job and might be solvent now instead of driving around in that old banger, in second rate shooting gear and with holes in your socks, and only able to afford paperback books?’ I’ll leave that one with you, but it’s obvious to me though. I actually did two years at Iceland in 1990-1992 and I had had an absolute ball. They were doing very well and I was in charge of the finances for the distribution division; a £37 million section of the company. Up until about 1990 that division had never shown up much on the Iceland radar. It wasn’t a very sexy sector to them. At Board level when considering distribution as a cost centre they had a magic percentage figure of I think 4% (again don’t quote me but, if correct, that’s the distribution costs compared to turnover) and as long as it was less than that they didn’t look too much into it. It had breached that marker in 1990, I guess for the first time, and they employed me and a controller over me who had oodles of distribution experience to take charge of the cost centre. I think when Malcolm had thought through how much that percentage marker was in real terms he had a quite normal Yorkshireman reaction: ’37 chuffing million, strangle the whippet, blood and sands, where’s me flat cap, I’ll go to the top of our stairs, ekki thump’ and so on. So, I got the job, largely because Malcolm didn’t know me all that well and Andy recommended me probably so he could have a laugh! I had a nice flashy car, a very decent salary (£32k I think in 1990, and you really must be impressed with that?) and although I worked all the hours possible, I really enjoyed it. These days, people write a lot about work/life balance. Or have they stopped writing about it and decided to take a holiday with the family instead, I don’t know. Back in those days I don’t think anyone had yet suggested it was something we should think about and as a result if you weren't in early and still there late, it was seen as a chink in your armour, almost an indication that you weren't too serious about your career. I didn’t much think about it. As a single man it was warm in the office, nice coffee machine, and an amazing canteen. It was great. I had a lot of interesting work to do too, and to be honest my flat was only just a tad bigger than I was anyway, and a lot smaller than my office at Iceland. And, Boy, was it cold?

Also did I neglect to mention hundreds of attractive ladies worked there too - well that helped as I was single. I need to be very careful here, as it might not be too PC these days to mention that I found the opposite sex attractive. That, though, is an entirely different book. Outrageous. I really did enjoy every day of that job. Some days I was going to drive to East London to visit a depot and call in at Milton Keynes on the way back to look at another one and then drive home again. What fun. The car made a nice boy racer roaring noise and I was very happy. And I think I was well thought of and I have to sing my praises and tell you that I got great results on the projects I undertook: the shrink-wrap, the fleet tyres, the diesel consumption…. I can sense you are nodding off. So why did I leave? After two years there I did have an itch but didn’t know where it was or how to scratch it: until one Friday night. I was sitting at my desk after 7pm and someone shouted at me: ‘I'm off, see you Monday’. I really hadn't realised how late it was. I glanced at my watch and it was nearly 7.30pm. ‘Oh, and enjoy your birthday’, they yelled as they went down the corridor on the other side of the slow closing door’. Would you believe it? I had forgotten that it was my own chuffing birthday. The itch was at that moment defined. I needed to do something drastic and different. On this current rollercoaster, I was destined to hit 65 before I could say: ‘Poor planning promotes piss poor performance’. Within a week I had booked my flights around the world, starting off at Mumbai (then known as Bombay) and a route that took in 13 countries over one year. If you can make a mental note here that my tales of India and Nepal are featured in my second book (‘Three Men and a Stoat’) and I definitely want you to buy that one as I’m going to pocket the profits myself! So anyway, this isn’t about me, as it was actually Malcolm that had written a book and it dawned on me that the people around this table (and many others I know) also deserved a book.

They each have great life stories. They have had successes (and failures like I said), will have lessons to pass on to others and a chapter on each of them would be quite entertaining and would also save a few bits of history for the Liverpool region in the future. Yes, let’s do it, let’s write a book. Actually, sod it, let’s go for it and let’s write a bestseller. Let’s celebrate the region, the era, the humour, the life lessons… Let’s have some of that really nice wine again, Andy. “What’s it called?” “To you mate, that’s called’ red’” “Thanks Andy.”

Chapter Three - Barry Owen So, after two or three forewords and two preliminary chapters, I decided to kick off this blockbuster with the aforementioned Barry Owen. He had first told that story about Mark Knopfler and that was when the seed of the idea of the book came into my spinning head. He had been saying for quite a while that we must meet up and do lunch or a coffee and we hadn’t got around to it. When I stepped out of my previous employment (totally broke) as a part owner of a restaurant in Liverpool in about 2008, I had done some work for him and it was a pleasure, even though the circumstances were difficult. It was not a nice time for him, nor indeed for the business in question, as the banks had turned on him (and many others) and were simply ripping the poor bugger and his team off. Let’s pause for a moment to explore how they did this. Barry’s business in this case was a huge property company. He is also the Chairman of Mason Owen, a business he co-founded years ago, but more on that later. This property company owned many properties and had loans against quite a few of them. The business had arrangements with many different banks and most of those banks, having caused the economic crisis of 2007/8 in the first place, now turned-on businesses like his to try and make their money back using a type of what could easily be termed legalised theft and/or extortion that went roughly like this. In Barry’s case, he (or the company) might have a loan with a bank and that loan was being paid off in monthly instalments and funded quite nicely by the rents paid by tenants of the property. So to undermine this status quo, the bank would revalue the property and find that, because of the recession they had caused, the particular site was now worth less and has hence now breached the terms of the legal arrangement they had once made (the covenant). In other words, its revised ‘loan to value’ ratio is now too high. The values’ relationship to the amount being borrowed is not large enough under the small print of the agreement. It’s still exactly the same property though, with exactly the same rental income.

Stage two, they have to put up the interest rate, as the small print again says they should because of this loan to value issue. This sets off more contrived alarm bells because under the original ‘never looked at before’ agreement, the interest is now too big in relation to the income. (Not surprising really, as they have just increased it). Hey-ho, they then have to sell the property off, which was the banks aim right from the start. It then gets the windfall income, from further additional charges, it needs into its accounts which makes them, as individuals, look good. Job done. Bonus time, drinks on me. In fact, at the time of the crisis the banks wrote off many loans and blamed their predecessors and made themselves look good when they got some money in from any subsequent sales. They could take the credit for any income they clawed back in the way I just outlined. Incoming Prime Ministers do a version of this. At the time, I helped Barry (in a very small way I have to say) to try and fight some of these cases and it was a real learning curve for me. I had always thought banks had codes of conduct, but that was not the case. I spent a few months there and I was amazed that he managed to stay positive. They were destroying a business (and ultimately succeeded) that had thrived for decades and for no justifiable, honest or decent reason. In the case of Barry’s business at the time, the rents always covered the loan repayments, so what was the problem? Self-interest must have been the problem as there were actually very few real cash flow issues. Anyway, that’s me black-balled for life with the banking sector but I had to give you some background as to how the solid relationship with Barry began. Barry was very grateful for my efforts as I did manage to get a couple of results against the odds. If this was a business book I would be advising you that the only way I got these results was by getting in front of the people but it’s not that sort of book. The saga had left Barry bitter and it always comes up when you meet him, but despite all that he still has an indomitable spirit. Now, however, we could finally get that coffee. That should be easy shouldn’t it? Our first attempt to get together was great but not quite what I had expected. We arranged to have lunch at the restaurant Piccolino in the centre of Liverpool but Barry, out of the blue, invited two colleagues along to join us! Simon Bland and Jamie Moffatt. Great company of course but I was not able to have the chat I

needed to start drafting chapter three, and in fact get this book off the ground and we had so much wine I wouldn’t have remembered much of it anyway. Turns out that the two of them are his side kicks and one of them, Simon, is also his son-in-law at the same time. I don’t think anyone but Barry could get that to work out. So, unabashed, we re-arranged a coffee in his office for a couple of weeks/months later and that was again to be our starting point. Good luck I now hear you saying. Barry was ten minutes late for that as I sat in his downstairs boardroom. Like most people these days, I played repeatedly with my emails and texts on an iPhone, wasting a huge amount of time. Anyway, here he is at last. The poor bugger has now lost all his hair after chemotherapy for cancer. He already had prostate cancer a few years back for which he sought treatment in the USA and the cancer has now returned this time to his bones. He is as tough as old boots and that’s before we even mention the brain haemorrhage that nearly killed him years before that. The man is concrete. Despite all this, those blue eyes still twinkle with mischief and the illnesses doesn’t merit a mention. As I did say previously, before the hair loss, he looked like Robert Redford had. He looked after himself and was very dashing and quite the charmer. Now he looks like he had just lost a scuffle with a hedge trimmer but you would not have known that he was ill if you couldn’t have seen him. The energy! With all these scrapes with illness that he has had, and ploughed on, you wonder whether the illnesses just had second thoughts about taking him on. While I had been poking at my phone, I daydreamed that the era that Barry has lived through in his business life was a better one than my own. Before all the modern communication nonsense, I actually believe that things were less hectic. They worked just as hard but these days we live with a contradiction. All these labour-saving devices don’t save labour. We have all these amazing gadgets that should make life easier but the opposite is actually happening. Nowadays we send a text or an email and then watch the phone and wait for a response. We stress ourselves out. We should have more free time but we actually don’t. We are locked on to the new way, and we are prisoners of it. WhatsApp, text, snapchat, email, bloody hell, and Instagram, and now the kids are shouting Tik Tok at me but I don’t intend to even ask them what that is.

As I say, when a reply doesn’t come, we start fretting and then text again, maybe text a question mark, or even ring the person. We just worry ourselves constantly and because it’s an instant form of communication we expect an instant answer. Our whole society is instant. In Barry’s day an exchange of emails would back then have been letters and something that took over a week to exchange. So because we seem to be able to get things done so quickly we take on way too many things not realising that all the other areas of that project take as long as they did in the old days and we have inadvertently over committed our time. These days we all have gadgets that just make us more disorganised. Take the process of meeting up. Years back if I wanted to meet up with you we would set a time and place and generally we would be there - simple. We would no doubt have checked beforehand where it was and that the meeting was still on by telephoning on a landline. Nowadays we often walk out of the office to meet someone and we have to firm up on the detail while we are on our way, even quite often finding out where we are going to be right to that last minute. We just don’t need to make decent arrangements anymore as we can change them by text and so on en-route. We can use maps to find the place. We can google its address. A few years back, I didn’t read the detail to a dinner I had been invited to and accepted. The previous two years that I had been invited by the same person it had been in Chester. Luckily this time the pal in question, called Nish, rang me to ask if I wanted picking up. When I said I would get the train, he was very surprised. The event was in Monaco, and he wanted to know if I wanted picking up from the airport. Anyway, I still went: 63 quid easyJet. So, and furthermore, modern gadgets make us absent minded and scatty. Well, me anyway. I don’t think I would miss it if it all went away tomorrow. And isn’t it bizarre that if someone were to read this in a hundred years, our current communication systems will seem so cute and old fashioned. How on earth I don’t know, but they surely will. We will probably have implanted earpieces and screens installed in our eyes, and oh lord, how hideous. Anyway, back to the book, and here he is.

When he comes into the room you can see why Barry tends to be late. He strikes up convivial conversation with absolutely everyone. It must add hours to each of his days. Take the lovely lady that brings us in a cuppa. We go through her family matters, how is so and so, has her daughter been on holiday, how is the baby, is the nephew still football mad? It’s all lovely, he knows so much about everyone and he genuinely is interested and cares about how things are for them and their relatives and friends. They in turn are totally chuffed that the head honcho shows this genuine interest and concern. This doesn’t help my cause of course, getting this best seller finished, but I ask him if he knows all his staff to this depth and, yes, of course he does. It’s one big family. I mention Jim Davies in passing, as my intro to the proceedings, thinking we are at last getting started and this leads to him telephoning Jim immediately. ‘Jim, good man, haven’t spoken to him in ages, let’s give him a call’. Oh Lord, I mutter! Thankfully, I can soon overhear that it’s the start of Jim’s voicemail (which I and many, many people know so, so well): ‘Sorry I missed you etc…’ Barry leaves a huge chatty voicemail, including a mention of what a fine chap I am again and then it’s down to business, 20 minutes of my available hour already gone! I quickly get stuck into my list via a little intro (again): namely did he mind doing this and had he read my draft of chapter 1? Of course, he had read it, it was very funny and he didn’t mind at all. He added that he wasn’t sure that anyone would find any of his life that interesting in any way. This by the way is the beginning of a theme that runs throughout the book, highlighting that his generation are so modest and self-effacing. So Barry, how did Mason Owen start?

Well back in about 1963 he had three job interviews arranged for himself after leaving school: Granada TV, J Walter Thompson Advertising and Thorpe’s Chartered Surveyors. Now I have to admit, as I am trying to write all this down at this first proper meeting, that I very quickly realised it wasn't going to work unless I could record the interview. Barry has such an encyclopaedic memory for names and events that I knew then that to really capture the Barry Owen interview well I should try and reproduce things in full including the names. Hence during that first meeting while I was trying to fiercely scribble names and events, I was already planning to arrange yet another meeting and to bring a voice recorder this time. I did however manage to capture many good tales, events, people etc, and I did need that next meeting, but, with his and my own busy schedule, that sequence of events took months. Anyway, here we are, months later and this time I am upstairs in a very old fashioned and opulent boardroom.

Barry, leaving on a jet plane So, back in the old days when Barry finished school, he got himself those three interviews as I said. The last one came first and Barry went up to Preston for it. The guy was so charismatic Barry shook hands with him on the job there and then at £750 a year. On returning home Barry's father wasn’t too pleased, in fact he ‘went ballistic’, something along the lines of: ‘you're going to work for a bunch of wretched estate agent spivs! ' Walter Thompson was a famous ad agency and they had an equally famous ad running at the time for Rolls Royce which included the line that the loudest noise in a Roller was the clock. Barry's dad genuinely could not believe that Barry hadn't even taken the second interview there or even tried his luck at Granada but had settled instead spontaneously on a job with estate agents of all people!

At the time Granada TV also looked to be the future of television and Barry’s father would have preferred either of the other two alternatives to the one route that Barry had single-handedly and so hastily shook hands on. Anyway, what was done was done and Barry had his first job. He joined the company on 1 August 1963 (how the hell do you remember that!) and spent three years there sharing an office and lifts to work with a certain Geoffrey Mason who was to become a lifelong friend and business partner (see chapter 4). Barry bought a house in Formby for £5,300 and thoroughly enjoyed the next three years. Geoff and he soon formed a property company with Brian Calvert and called it Telegraph Properties. On 1 July 1967 they finally started Mason Owen as partners and found an office for rent at £5 a week inclusive in Hamilton Street. They rented it off Joe Hearn. (Do I need all this detail Barry?) Initially they had only one secretary who lasted about a week, so they changed to one each: Vanessa Gobi worked for Barry while Geoff had Carol Marks. Then came the first fee earning employee in Tony Glynn- Jones who joined them at their new offices on Harrington Street and off they went onto the next phase of the Mason Owen expansion. In 1968 they moved to Refuge Assurance House on Lord Street and from there they started to prosper. A company called Waterworths gave them a massive contract involving something like 78 shops to sell. In reality they couldn’t even afford the sales advertising boards so they approached Ian Maiden with their dilemma who promptly offered them the opportunity to pay for the boards when they had sold the properties! Isn’t that a fantastic story of how things worked back in his day. It doesn’t happen like that now. Good business sense is sadly lacking a lot of the time these days but then you don’t know if you can trust people anymore. As I sit there, I sort of lament the passing of his era. I suppose that there were dishonest people then but these days you start to wonder where the honest people have all gone to. I have been taken for a ride and swindled by more than a handful of people. Even those that I would have counted as great friends before the event. I have lent money to them that isn’t really mine (if you consider I also owe the bank a lot) and they look you in the eye and lie to you. As one example only, one mate

announced (over the phone) that he simply wouldn’t be giving me it back – ‘he needed it more than me’. Anyway – back to Barry. At the time their accountants were Cook and Co - and the boss there, Clifford Cook, introduced them to a bright young man called Stephen Laing (see chapter 12). Their solicitors were Weightmans and another young chap there did Mason Owen's legal work, the brilliant young Peter Bullivant (he has a chapter too, number 5). It’s like one big family. Peter Bullivant later formed Bullivant & Co, which then joined what is now the national firm of Hill Dickinson. You are getting the pattern here I hope: friendships started in the 1960s and still intact today. It’s sort of quaint, and I think remarkable and almost unbelievable in some ways. I don’t believe it happens as much today and I would actually put that down partly to the new communication methods I was ranting on about before and the disappearance of integrity. For example, as I look at my ‘iPhone’ right now I have over a thousand numbers listed. Why on earth? Who are they all? Anyway, Barry quite clearly loves all his cronies. He boasts there and then that he's rung Peter every day for 50 years and Stephen every other day. When I catch up with the two of them I must ask them exactly what that means to them! Ringing someone is one stage back from face-to-face chat so I suggest that we should try and do more of it. Texting, emailing and so on might all have their place, but I have discovered that going back to ringing people is a better way. Stephen Laing's nickname either was then or became ‘Stainless’. Barry says that he can't ever remember him swearing once - ‘the odd ‘damn’ maybe’ And he also recalled, still incredulous to this day, that: ‘Stephen was never laddish or coarse. You would never find him commenting on a lady’s ‘assets’ that's for sure!’ I knew what an achievement that was considering the era they lived through. A ‘stainless’ attitude to the fair sex was not something that would come easy to anyone that grew up in an era where Terry Thomas and Leslie Phillips roamed the earth unchallenged.

Back to the story, and next thing, Barry and Geoff founded ‘Liquorsave’ with one Graham Walker (no obvious relation to Malcolm) and that ended up as several hundred stores only to be sold to Jimmy Gulliver making Geoff and Barry their first million. (You can understand why I had to tape this as it all came out pretty quickly and there’s no way I could have written it down). Graham Walker was an interesting character and he went on to lead the British challenge in the Americas cup in 1986. There’s some more stuff like that going to come into the book when I get to have lunch with Johnny Prestt (see chapter 9) as he is/was a prolific sailor and adventurer. He will deny it of course - they all do. At this point Barry pauses from his recounting of who's who in Liverpool business and asks me if I know where all his money went? I am a bit nonplussed at this question as I was supposed to be asking the questions. For some reason and for a split second I worry if he is going to suggest I pocketed it all. However, I take a guess: ‘property?’ I blurt out in the hope it will take his mind off the thought of my potential implication in his loss. Wrong - he has actually spent it all on school fees. But as I have now mentioned property, we go full circle back to banks. He shoots off to fetch and present me with a copy of a book called ‘Bad Banks’ by Alex Brummer. The journey out across the thick carpet from the boardroom to his office takes him ages as he has to talk to everyone as they pass. It’s about 50 feet in total, so about ten foot per person! As I sit rapidly aging in the oak panelled room lined with a vast array of truly amazing art, I can see across the corridor into his office and all the photos around and behind the desk where he sits. Everywhere he goes he is constantly surrounded by friends and family. He has a warm glow about him and clearly everyone loves him. As he sits at the desk looking for the book the pictures surround him are a bit like a halo I muse: Saint Barry? He is back now and back onto ‘Bad Banks’, which he generously signs for me. (Months later I lend it to a couple of young entrepreneurs I am helping, and they never give it back: denying that I ever lent it to them along with my signed copy of John Timpson’s book!).

He then starts to read the first chapter to me, which is all about a scandal at the Co-op bank. It’s a bit worrying as I don’t really know if he is going to read me the whole book. Thankfully he stops. The main relevance of the start of this book and the scandal at the Co-op is that he was about to move his business from RBS to the Co-op and that extraordinary mess erupted. We swap a couple of tales about the way the banks behaved during the crisis and we both know the tales anyway as I was of course working for him for some of the time. It was during that time that I really saw how talking got better results than email and text. Then we are interrupted by a call on his mobile from the MD at Barlow’s of which Barry is a Director. Not wishing to listen in, I drift off and don’t much hear his exchange on the phone. Surprisingly quickly he is off the call and we are back on track as the call has ended. Mason Owen has moved to Refuge Assurance House and the staff numbers have multiplied. Then comes a London office, then a property management office and then the move to Dale Street. In 1968 they buy Gladstone House for £44,500, only to find that the bank would not complete on the deal. Barry immediately rang up a Jewish client called Jack Beanstock and he not only sorted out the money for them, he also arranged another few bob for them to refurbish it. This all came about through an interview with Sydney Friedland. I hope everyone of these people mentioned buys a copy of the book. The firm’s early growth continued in strides but at this stage in the interview, I try to turn the conversation to Barry’s love of art and when all that might have started. Barry launches himself into this new topic with typical gusto and all about how he had met the marvellous character Monty Bloom in the early 60s for whom he had managed a property portfolio. Whenever Barry was at Monty’s’ house, which was heavily adorned in Lowry paintings, Monty would always ask Barry if he liked them. Barry would reply honestly that to him they looked just like the kids had drawn them. This went on for years, until one day Monty asked the question a slightly different way. Which one would Barry have if he had to have one of them? Barry conceded to Monty that they were growing on him and that he actually quite liked ‘The Assignation’. For many years after that exchange there were instructions within Monty Blooms’ last will and testament that Barry be allowed to buy that picture at a very

reasonable price should Monty die. Barry did buy that painting and the price was very reasonable. His love of Lowry’s had blossomed by then and he acquired a lot of lithographs and in fact collected whatever he could from that time onward. I asked Barry what the tale was about a company accepting a picture to settle a business debt - was that a Lowry and was it true? Barry switches to this tale, and how Manfred Gorvey took a piece of art to write off a debt. This was another Lowry piece called ‘Going to Work’. What was funny about this was that at the time they too thought it was maybe done by the kids. However, it's worth around £2 million now and it still hangs in their offices in Hans Crescent. Barry never managed to get this one back. We pause for a while to look around the beautiful boardroom and admire some of the work there. Barry’s Mason Owen collection is wide ranging and he has further works of his own at home. We then talk for a moment about Andy Pritchard and his growing art collection. Andy has been a mate of mine since 1981 and, as I think I have mentioned, he rose eventually to be the CEO of, and largest shareholder in, Iceland frozen foods. Only because I left that is, as Malcolm Walker told me. Several years ago he sold his shares and ‘trousered’ many millions. Since then, Andy has bought up a lot of art and he loves discussing it with Barry when he can because Barry will chip in with lines like ‘Oh yes, I used to own that one’. One of Barry's daughters is married to a gentleman from Christies, and he too has helped Andy with advice on artworks. Barry no doubt dreams what he would do with the sort of money that Andy has, rampaging his way through the art world brandishing his cheque book. Andy has been far more successful in art than many of his other investments. His wine investments were a disaster as for a start it’s a form of investment that you can drink: not a good idea for Andy. You will all know how Winnie the Pooh never made any money setting aside honey. So Barry Owen: Family, friends, art - what else is there? At this question he admits that he has a weakness for motorcars. He immediately mentions an Aston Martin DB2 that he regrets selling that once belonged to Mark

Knopfler (him again!). I have heard him say this a few times so it must really hurt but at the time he needed it - for school fees! (them again!) All his kids have got a house from the bank of Dad as he has always been very keen to get them on the property ladder. We both sit there and wonder at how we work all our lives just to make the next generations lives better! Well our parents did it, so I guess it’s our lot in life. And it’s fun I guess. So that’s Barry and Chapter 3, and then we go and have a gin and tonic across the road.

Chapter Four - Geoff Mason and his sons On my wall at work, I have a compliment slip from a rugby dinner I attended in London back in 2015. Someone said something to me that night and it affected me so much that I wrote it down on this handy slip of paper from the table in front of me and I then asked the individual to sign it. Yes, I wrote it down, extra admin work on a night off, and I then shoved it back in front of this quite large person and asked him to sign it. It was that much of a game changer for me. This was Geoff Mason’s elder son Christopher, often mistaken for the love child of Oliver Reed and Clarissa Dickson Wright. What he had said (in response to my enquiry as to whether he wanted a pint of Guinness to accompany his large red wine) I felt compelled to write down. This is what he had said: ‘Oh no, Mr Wainwright, you are way off the mark; my days as a bon viveur are well behind me’.

Chris Mason truly did write that to me

That night he demonstrated that he must have meant they were to cease the following day because he actually ‘bon viveured’ that night until about three in the morning, not that I would know too much about it because some half-wit in London thought it would be funny to put something in my drink at a nightclub and I ended up in A&E. At my age. Why would they do that? Anyway at least Chris was apparently making an effort, even if on that occasion it was only hot air, to stop living the high life. I was soon to suspect that ‘bon viveuring’, or whatever the noun or verb is, if there is one, might run in his family. I am actually more acquainted with the elder Mason son, Andrew, and I do know that if bon viving/viveuring whatever was a sport of any stature then the Mason boys would be the hard living equivalent of the Brownlee brothers. This doesn’t automatically mean that Dad Geoff is the same, but I would have bet he was in his heyday, as I picked up the phone to Andy for the zillionth time to try and get a meeting in the diary. To save time I had even gone ahead and arranged who I wanted to meet after Geoff and it looked as if my appointment with Peter Bullivant would end up taking place before I ever caught up with Mason the elder. So back to the plot (and I bet you are wishing there actually was one) I finally do get that illusive first meeting with Geoff into the diary. You will remember that we have just met Barry Owen co-founder of the huge property consultants Mason Owen. Now it was my turn to get an hour with the other half of the partnership: Geoff Mason. There is no hiding the size of the monster they created. (Mason Owen, that is, not Chris Mason). It was so big they would split it into two big businesses in 1992 and Mason Owen and Mason and Partners are now two large standalone property consultants thriving independently in Liverpool, London and I guess pretty much ‘the world’. To get to Geoff’s personal office I have to go along a main open plan section where many people are beavering away. Things are clearly going well for Mason and Partners. They are all happy, smiley people (unless its wind) and the ones that are able to spare a moment from their jobs look up and acknowledge your passing with a small smile and a nod and maybe a little quizzical look : ‘Who can that be who is going into the inner sanctum of the boss’s office?’ Geoff’s office is at the end of this big area and is large enough to have both his desk and a separate table and chairs in it.

I have another tale about large offices, but I will leave that to the chapter on rugby presidents. His son Andrew is based next door (Chris runs the London office) and he strolls in wearing jeans and a baggy shirt to join us for the chat. A shirt is doing well to be baggy on this chap, he is certainly quite a unit. The reason for Andy’s attendance at the meet up is allegedly that Geoff’s memory is ‘not as good as it used to be’. Ironically, I find him to be full of facts, figures and names from the 60s, 70s and so on up to current times. Maybe he's just a bit paranoid about it as he is 72 now and it doesn’t quite roll out as quickly as it did and as it does still with Barry. The first thing that strikes you about Geoff is that he is looking very fit. He immediately says that he cycles often along the Wirral way. I make a mental note to do more cycling, it’s clearly good for you. There doesn't appear to be a pick on his upper body, and this is, to be very honest, in sharp contrast to his son Andrew who, if he wasn't a property guru, you would probably hazard a guess that he was a brewery rep or a food critic (in maybe the Wigan area). Geoff and the Mason boys share a passion of mine for rugby union and Geoff’s playing days finished at the ripe old age of 52 when he broke his leg in two places. Birkenhead and Liverpool…. No, only kidding, he sustained a double fracture. He doesn't tell the story with any element of drama about it at all. It sounds like it was just ‘one of those things’, an inconvenience and I imagine him in the bar afterwards at New Brighton rugby club with a bag of ice on the double break chatting with the lads and laughing about how he winced when they turned his foot back to face the right way, how he argued with the ref about whether he could play on and then how he downed umpteen pints of anaesthetic before a fish and chip supper. There would probably have been a doctor amongst this after match group, he’s normally the one that keeps going out for a fag and looks bloody dreadful. Like most of the characters in this book I also imagine that somewhere on the Wirral there is a wife (the long-suffering Mrs Mason) with no idea where the bloody hell her husband and two sons are, and let’s face it, probably not that bothered to be honest. She has probably had beef bourguignon on the aga for six hours and is herself on her second bottle of Pino.

I may be doing a lot of people an injustice here but what the hell, its what is coming into my head – and no disrespect to anyone intended. Nowadays, Geoff is very relaxed with an open neck shirt and he varies from leaning towards me on his desk looking straight at me from about a metre away to reclining back precariously in his chair with his feet on the desk in a position that you can only describe as completely horizontal and definitely highly dangerous. I don’t know if he is doing this deliberately for a laugh, to see when I finally crack and demand that he sit up straight. So, what did he do before him and Barry got together? Well, he worked for Bevan Son and Maples on about £1.50 a week but he really wanted to be an architect. On his journey to work in those days he would be sitting on the train waiting for it to move off and he will always remember the familiar daily sound of a young man running desperately to catch the same train as him, often shouting out for it to wait and always late. This turned out to be Birkenhead schoolboy Barry Owen who he was later to spend so much of his life in business with. (When I had asked Barry about sport, he hadn’t mentioned all this running for the train that he did). Geoff and Barry ended up working for Bernard Thorpe, a commercial estate agent, the one that Mr Owen Senior was so cross about, (which eventually became part of DTZ). The two of them soon ran the two main parts of the company and they were offered partnerships in the Preston office. At that time, Geoff had broken his leg for the first time, again while playing rugby, and he had 16 weeks off work. Barry meanwhile, as he was only part qualified, was offered a partnership that they termed would be a ‘cadet’ partnership. Barry found this a little demeaning and he decided he was going to ‘bugger off’ and do his own thing. They decided to both go and set up together and had soon committed £5 per week for offices in Harrington Street. The rest of Geoff’s history - office wise- is in Barry’s chapter for very obvious reasons. As Barry did, Geoff regales me with the same tales of the assistants that persevered to work with them. The chat has a couple of what is now deemed non-PC comments about whether they were good looking or not but it’s very clear that he and Barry were and are very good at what they do and had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. They soon undermined the monopoly that had been enjoyed by the London property companies for quite a while and began to expand.

Barry did a huge amount of work with big ventures such as Ethel Austin while Geoff attracted some very seriously huge clients who all seemed to go on to enjoy highly successful (and in some cases record-breaking) flotations. He worked for and became good friends with Albert Gubay (and was actually his Best Man) who was the man behind the Kwik Save phenomenon. In 1970, with that chain, they set the record for the biggest oversubscription on a flotation. Gubay was legendary for his thriftiness. Geoff has a great story to capture this about when they stopped at a motorway service station to order butties and coffees. When they asked Albert what he would have, he simply requested hot water and proceeded to dip into it a tea bag he had bought with him. He died a few years back and by then he was well into his 80s (87). At his height Geoff and Mason Owen were running all his property acquisitions. The fledgling company Iceland Frozen Foods also became a client of Geoff's and when that later floated it was (I think I recall this accurately) 113 times oversubscribed and a new record for a flotation at that time. I worked on that when I was at Ernst & Young as a trainee but I didn’t get to meet Geoff formally as I wasn’t important enough and I was only a lowly number cruncher. Geoff ran Iceland’s property portfolios for decades and formed lasting friendships and professional relationships with a large number of the stars in this book. The third of the bigger success stories was Eddie Healey who had a company called Status Discounts which was also a record holder for flotation subscription size. They were involved in initiatives such as the Meadowhall shopping centre. This is really big stuff and I am both impressed and a little bit speechless. These two were/are such big players yet are so unassuming: so normal and approachable: no airs and graces. Eddie Hayley’s deal on Meadowhall was developed with Paul Sykes and while they were all really great businessmen, Geoff also has lovely tales about the human side of things. While doing a development with Godfrey Bradman who did Broadgate in London, Paul and he stood looking at the plans until Geoff finally lost his patience and reached over to turn them up the other way and then physically swing Godfrey around so that he knew what he was looking at and from what direction. At this point in the chat, for some reason, Geoff feels the need to tell me that his son Andrew has an amazing singing voice; so good that he sometimes signs autographs when sozzled. I can imagine that he does have a good voice so I make a mental note to book him for my next birthday.

I then lose that note. I very much doubt though that he signs autographs when inebriated as I know for a fact that he is asleep when he has sampled even the smallest amounts of alcohol. He has been sitting there mostly mute for the whole interview so far. I suspect he is dying for a nap. As I mentioned, Geoff had said that Andy was drafted into the meeting because Geoff’s memory was apparently failing but this hasn’t been the case so far and Andy’s only sparse interjections have been inaccurate and it seems that it might possibly be his memory that is failing. To add to his lack of any contribution so far he also refuses to sing. I suppose that with his staff the other side of the glass partition it would not be good for his image and his senior position as the Managing Director. Do you know what, while we are talking about the enigma that is Andrew Mason, we should mention that this sleeping thing is really quite serious. I have been looking through old photos and there’s another book in there somewhere on this subject alone. In fact, let’s have a practice run for that. WE NOW TAKE A LITTLE DIVERSION FROM MY BOOK and please imagine those wavy, dream-like images, as we move back in time to another place entirely. Let us pause for a while and detour to the possibility of Andy, son of wide-awake Geoff Mason, writing a tour guide to places he has been to. The difference with this guidebook will be, in contrast to other travel or restaurant books, that its writer Andy has fallen asleep at all the venues he writes about. It’s a sort of USP if you like. This is after all what he does - he falls asleep, and he gleans the feedback on the venues from companions afterwards, generally the next day. Ibiza Amazing place, so I am told anyway, as I never made it. I had already fallen asleep, this time standing upright, at the very entertaining Jazz Club. Actually, I don’t remember much about that either as I had been drifting in and out of consciousness on the way there from a Tapas bar. Now that was a good place, I do remember a lot of that. Great food and loads of it (maybe that’s why I became so uncharacteristically sleepy).

The photo below is of me giving it large at the Blue Marlin -yet another snoozy place. If only they would turn the music up this would never happen.

“Giving it large at the Blue Marlin“

The Tube in London A very peaceful place to get your head down, highly recommended. I don’t know whether it was the quiet atmosphere in the compartment (coming back from a rugby union international match against Ireland at Twickenham) or the smooth ride (of the fifty year old British Rail old rolling stock with about 400 people

singing and shouting in each carriage) that sent me off but I do know that it was nothing to do with a full days corporate hospitality at Twickenham that afternoon

On the London tube – after the England v Ireland heading into town.

When Wainwright is talking at a corporate dinner I was very fortunate to join a group of very old pals at a dinner at Chester Rugby Club recently where Wainwright was the comic turn (not) and he was interviewing Warren Gatland. Now, Gatland was interesting: Wainwright not so much. I was less fortunate however to have had lunch that day with one Parminder Basran (he is actually on the last page of this book, being too loud to put anywhere else) so the details of the evening event itself are largely sketchy to say the least.

The aftereffects of

I remember laughing when listening to the author in Wainwright likened my table to the the main book speak cast of Cocoon but after that it all went a bit woozy again. I think the aircon at Chester Rugby Club must be on the blink. Great Night though, my cocoon mates tell me.

Award winning Indian restaurant in Birmingham This again was reported to me the next day to be a truly amazing restaurant. We had spent all that day at a one day test match between England and Sri Lanka and we had slightly over indulged in the hospitality area. Wainwright had a mate who was the Chief Exec of Warwickshire CC and of Edgbaston itself (Colin Povey) and he had offered to come and say hello to Wainwright and his fine guests. He did say hello, but only from the doorway, as when he took one look at us, any forward movement he had had up to then was halted immediately and instinctively a pressing meeting became necessary anywhere else but in that room. He gave us a sort of ‘checking up on the kids’ look around the door and he was off out and at some speed. Quite nimble for a man who must now be twice the weight he was when he was the GB water polo goalkeeper. That evening I was transported to this award-winning curry house. I think we were all the worse for wear but yet again it was me that headed to the land of dreams. The food was excellent, I saw the photos later and read the website, but don’t remember the night. Sadly I was otherwise engaged looking at the inside of my eyelids. I couldn’t find a photo from that restaurant. I was at the back of the shot anyway and I had a tea towel over my head, so it wasn’t much of a photo.

Here is one of me with Andy P and his lovely bride Patricia: Just look at the state of them.

Monaco - This was a truly amazing event.

Obviously, some bugger has poured water over my crotch in the photo, but the rest of the time was apparently fun. We ………. er…... sorry where was I? I’m possibly sorry now about introducing that last segment, so let us return to the main event.

Some bugger has poured water over my crotch

There are many more venues that we could write about but we will leave it there for now and leave Andy to decide if he wants to finish the book himself and make his own fortune. Another few wavy bits, and we are now back in the proper book. Sorry about that.

Meanwhile, we are back on Rugby Union now and Geoff tells me about Colin Carney who was a New Brighton winger and had the nickname ‘skin’. One Saturday night Geoff found himself in the loos in the Rugby Club standing next to Colin's Dad Alf. In those days you tended to wee at a large often stainless-steel trough and Geoff noticed that Alf had forgotten to correctly extract his tackle and was basically weeing with his trousers still on. Geoff stood there incredulous as the liquid came out of the bottom of the legs of the poor old bugger’s trousers while they in turn changed to a different shade of grey. He turned and walked out leaving Geoff with the remark: ‘By Jove I needed that’. Just like Barry, Geoff’s staff all love him and he also tends to exchange pleasantries with everyone he passes, a habit that makes getting anywhere quite difficult and very unpredictable. It’s been a rollercoaster with these two in the last two chapters. As I near completion of this tome, neither of them are in great health. They are fighting on but time catches up with all of us, and this was clearly one of the reasons that I started this book off in the first place and the fact that I’m not getting any younger either. With them will pass an era. In those days if you shook hands with someone, if you made a deal, you stuck to it. I think that’s gone, but maybe I’m unlucky or I’m a bad judge of character in the first place. Back then you paid people back: maybe I’m just unlucky.

Barry and Geoff built a business on relationships and hard work and now I would query whether modern communication methods are fundamentally changing all that. Things are done differently now which is why a new generation come along and roll their eyes at our shortcomings, like we did in our day to the generation before us. Until I no longer can, I will always raise a glass to Mason & Partners and to ‘bon viveuring’.

Chapter Five - Peter Bullivant I will always raise a glass to the star of this next chapter as well. Peter Bullivant is the solicitor that we have mentioned a few times before and I have known of him for many years. Back in the early years I was only a minion and wasn’t involved in the important conversations, I was just working for the big noises at the top. That would also have been the relationship back when Iceland floated on the stock exchange for example. Since then, I have been in his company in professional circles and maybe not even realising it half the time. After the flotation and when I worked at Iceland as an auditor, he was the main solicitor for the company and has been ever since to the best of my knowledge. Like I mentioned before he was involved in all the work for that flotation, but I was just a gofer. Iceland did some big stuff back in those days (buy Malcolm’s book with the change you will have after buying mine), and you will be spellbound. As a mid-page, postscript, I have just finished reading his son, Richard’s book, The Green Grocer, and it too is an excellent buy. So now I have given you a dilemma and you will have to decide which one to buy with the change. At one stage the company bought a much larger frozen food rival called Bejam. A mackerel eating a tuna. In another year, it floated of course and in another it bought Bookers. It did a lot of extraordinary things and Peter was always one of the main professional advisors to Malcolm and his team, pretty much throughout all that time. It wasn’t until many years later that we met each other properly and got to know each other a bit more. My eldest children were pals with Peter’s grandchildren. Peter’s son Ralph Bullivant (another lawyer) and his wife Andrea became our pals and hence we met Peter and his equally lovely wife Klazein at parties socially. I have probably spelt Klazein wrong but she won’t mind, I think she would forgive anyone almost anything.

Do you know, on the subject of personality, I cannot imagine Peter ever being flustered or stressed. I am quite sure there are people that know him that might counter this but personally I just can’t imagine it: he seems totally unflappable. Like ‘Stainless’ who we spoke of earlier, I can’t imagine him swearing or even ogling the fair sex, other than very discretely. Classy, professional, and charming. On top of that, he is always so immaculately dressed and, as I mentioned in the first chapter when talking about Jim Davies, even when he wears scruffy, mismatched clobber he still somehow looks smart and affluent. I recall the episode of Fawlty Towers where Basil thinks he has met such class in the form of Lord Melbury. In that instance he is mistaken but I’m not here: there are no bricks in Peter’s briefcase: he is the real deal. And he can’t half drink, not that that’s a talent as such. At Andy P’s fiftieth birthday party in a chateau in France in about 2008, Peter got embroiled in a bit of a late drinking session with a bunch of us. The banter was so good that the time soon disappeared. I remember going to bed at around 3am thinking that having the largest frame out of all the gathering, being also a rugby player (hence used to continual heavy drinking: it’s part of the training and is needed to keep your body weight up) and also the youngest, I should be the brightest at breakfast. In actual fact it was such a heavy night I couldn’t imagine many others would actually make breakfast at all. The next morning when I finally made it downstairs, only about five hours after going to bed in the first place, he was already sitting there chatting to his aforementioned lovely wife: with toast and English breakfast marmalade in one hand and a well-thumbed Daily Telegraph in the other. He was wearing a bright red jumper, country check shirt, mustard trousers (what else) and brown brogues. He looked fresh faced, clean shaven, bright eyed, and in sharp contrast to me. How on earth? Does he have a twin? ‘Wainwright, how the devil are you?’ ‘Not as well as you, apparently, old boy!’, I blathered. Indestructible. He should have been knackered after the night before, but then so many of his generation are simply bullet proof.

Anyway, I needed to get sat down with that man Peter and have a coffee and/or a bite of lunch. I will telephone him as I need to thank him at the same time. My wife Alison and I had a great time at a dinner party at his house very recently. He had some of his old chums there and they were very good company and all of the same mould as Peter. One of them had only known Ali about ten minutes when, well into his seventies by the way, I could hear him plotting to elope with her as soon as they could arrange the logistics. After all she was ‘a cracking bit of totty’ and she ‘could do much better than me.’ This is straight out of ‘Doctor at Large’ or the ‘Carry on’ films and I think it’s classic and of that age: part of our history now. So, back live, I call Peter on the telephone. It’s been about nine months since he said that he would ring me the following week. But at 70 plus I guess you can be excused for forgetting trivia like me and my bestseller. I imagine that when we have that long awaited coffee at the Village Hotel in Bromborough he will simply want to talk about everyone else like all the other old buggers in this book and resist any attempt to talk about him. I will try and get some decent stuff out of him though, come what may. If you want to learn a lot about Peter’s career and how he is seen in the business community at large and in the North West in particular you should read the oration by Professor Frank Sanderson when introducing Peter as the recipient of an honorary fellowship to Liverpool John Moores University. It really says a lot about the man. You can look that up yourselves, but I am arranging a meeting at the Village Hotel in Bromborough, to ascertain Peter’s no doubt modest take on his career in the legal profession and on his life so far. For some reason I am thinking of Ranulph Fiennes as I write this. I have met Sir Ranulph. I was invited by a friend of mine (John Greaves: ex MBNA director, then Homeserve) to hear Ranulph talk and field questions at Chester Racecourse. The way Ran (I’m pretending we are mates now but he wouldn’t know me from Adam) understates things reminds me again of Peter and the others in this book. They are all modest and self-effacing and they play down absolutely everything. In Ranulph’s talk he mentioned an expedition he was on where they were planning to float on an iceberg for three months or so to prove that some race had made it across some piece of water in days now gone. Sorry I didn’t take the detail in.

In the event, there were some complications and they ended up drifting for six months but only had the food for three months. Ranulph called this ‘inconvenient’. Bloody hell, I wouldn’t like to try and print what I would call it, but it definitely wouldn’t be inconvenient. Ranulph’s wife Ginny was the same as him. When he came around from a heart attack, in his sixties at the time, she told him that she had great news, he was going to climb Everest next. After one of his expeditions, he was annoyed that his frostbitten fingers kept catching on things, so he chopped the ends off them with the garden shears. Back live, I have that date in the diary with Peter Bullivant and we agreed to meet for that coffee. I’m there early and he is there at exactly 10 AM. We order a couple of coffees and then dither for a while about whether or not we want a biscuit. He cuts matters short and decides for both of us on millionaire’s shortbread. Very nice indeed and the next hour absolutely flies by. Product placement for the Village Inn there and Starbucks: we will discuss money, or shortbread, later. It was as I predicted. Talking to Peter reminded me so much of the other meetings: so modest. Many young people are not like this at all these days and instead boast about their qualities: qualities you soon find they actually don’t have. ‘I can’t understand what you could possibly find of interest in my dull old life story’, he muses. He actually does seem a bit worried that there might not be anything interesting for him to think of and sits wracking his brains for me while simultaneously insisting that his memory is terrible. It’s not, but I do find out during the get-together that Peter is actually in his late seventies. I had absolutely no idea. I thought he was about 72 and only because I have a vague idea of how long he had been around Liverpool and I have met his mates. It was the big 80 not so far away for him. We talk about everybody else that is in the book first and I tell him some of the better stories that are in it to get him warmed up. We laugh but then we try and get down to something a bit more serious:

‘When did you start your own practice?’ Peter had done his legal training with Weightmans having always been a Wirral lad and in 1970 he basically set up on his own: PW Bullivant, along with one assistant. In around 1973 he was joined by Jim Davies and Guy Wallace who became partners in this venture. They eventually left and not, it must be noted, on any bad feeling, but to set up on their own. (You know that story because they became DWF). I say there was no bad feeling because it was clear that the two of them leaving had big ambitions whereas Peter wanted to keep things small and controlled. One of the great step changes for Peter was the arrival of Pam Jones in around 1971/2 as a clerk and she subsequently became ‘one of the best lawyers that he has ever come across’. That’s fair praise indeed coming from him. I’m not sure whether I should be trying to contact her but I decide to stick to my theme of old blokes, shooting and fishing. So far I have included just blokes I have been out and about with so it’s not sexist. Back in the old days you didn’t come across rugby playing women (they are amazing at it now) and they didn’t do much cricket, golf, shooting and so on. Anyway, Peter can’t speak too highly of her and their partnership flourished. They together became Bullivant Jones in 1978. Pam and Peter had a variety of big clients and the names come thick and fast, just like in the meeting with Geoff and with Barry before. For example, Michael Weeks: he was also a friend and client of Barry and Geoff. Back in these heady days they jumped a flight to New York to watch an Ali fight. Those were the days! Albert Gubay was also a client, and Peter played a big part in their success. Graham Walker started his career as an accountant at Coopers and later started North West Vintners, a large and very successful business. This is one I know myself as I visited them again on the audit team with EY when I was training. It’s the same Graham Walker that went on to back attempts to win the Americas Cup. He went with Jim when he left to be a client of DWF. Alan Birchall gets a mention. I’ve heard the name and recall that he had a fine singing voice and once blagged his way into singing live at an NFL game in the States.

He set up the hugely successful Coleman meats. I wonder to myself whether he is as good a singer as Andrew Mason and would I be able to get the two of them together (while both awake). It’s an impressive list and I’m not sure if I have written down the right names against the right businesses and the right anecdotes but next thing you know I have asked him about his rugby union days as I’m not managing to get down everything he is telling me and I want to slow him down. Peter actually stopped playing rugby in his thirties. For some reason I was thinking he was one of those nutters that carry on until close to their sixties, but I was probably thinking of Geoff Mason again. My very own dad Tony used to have a good tale of a rugby mate of his who played until he was 60. He had been advised as a lad to take up rugby to keep him out of mischief and had hence played the game for 45 years. On the day of his sixtieth birthday and his last game for the Old Edwardians in Birmingham he scored a try that was the third one he had scored during his career. Like the other two, it seemed he had been pushed onto the ball when it was over the try line, probably in this last instance as a sort of retirement present. This tale is in one of those ‘strange facts of rugby’ type books. Eric Jones, I believe his name was. I don’t know if it also adds in the book that Eric held a raffle at the Old Edwardians club house and the first eight drawn out of the hat were to be his coffin bearers when he died. I like that. Can you imagine if the draw produced some of the extremes of size and shape that you find at all rugby clubs and the chaos that would ensue when they tried to lift and then keep a coffin level (and keep the contents in it!) while all drunk in charge. None of that nonsense for Peter, he gave up the game at a sensible age. He was a wing forward and I would imagine that he was quite a handful to play against. Did you have any claims to fame? ‘Well I did play against the Springboks (South Africa ) if that’s of any interest?’ If that’s of any interest?! I wonder whether he would have told me this had I not asked a direct question that meant he had to mention it? It was back in the very difficult days where sport and apartheid clashed. South Africa were to play in Ireland but that game was put under a lot of political

pressure and was eventually called off. As a result they (SA) were looking for a fixture and New Brighton, who were due to play Trinity College Dublin on that day, proposed a combined game. Peter played in it. I resolve to find proof of this and plan to head to New Brighton Rugby Club to see if I can find a photo of him in his heyday. I fail but I do get a New Brighton programme on eBay.

There he is at number 6. Peter also mentioned playing against Abertillery and against the legendary Welsh player Haydn Morgan who played 27 times for Wales and for the Lions. The fixture list that New Brighton had back then was a very serious one indeed and they were one of the best clubs in Britain as were their neighbours my club Birkenhead Park. Thinking he is probably holding some other great feats back I ask him straight: ‘Come on Peter, what else have you done?’ ‘Well, I sailed across the Atlantic in around 2000? (He sounds almost apologetic?). I sounded as if I was going to fall off my chair! It had originally been proposed to do it quite a few years before but when suddenly Barry Owen was hit by his brain haemorrhage they felt they had to call it off. In the end he did it years later with Richard Walker, Malcolm Walker’s son, amongst others.

‘What about the art Peter, how did you get into that?’ I ask Peter this as we, Ali and I, have been over to the gallery that he has in the outbuildings at his Farm in Cheshire. If you’re interested do check out www.gorstellagallery.co.uk. At the outset they just wanted to make use of the buildings there. In 1990 they stripped and painted the walls and asked eight local artists if they would like to exhibit their works there. It proved a success and it has been going ever since. When Peter felt like packing it in, his daughter Bridget and her husband took it over. They now send out very sophisticated brochures every three months or so to a database of contacts and the paintings are then exhibited and on sale for a few weekends. It’s a lovely day or out and very well organised. If you drag the kids with you they hate it and it’s a great way of getting revenge for them ruining your life. It promotes art and is a great experience. My last question is, “Where did he meet your lovely wife?” On a gay nudist beach in Spain, he says with a wry smile. No further questions, your honour.

Chapter Six Andy Pritchard During the time that I have written this book, the layout and plan of it has had to take shape on its own, and sort of morph its way to the finish line, evolving and changing as it goes. Any proper writer will probably tell you that you should plan it all out before you start putting pen to paper (or these days, finger to key). Because I didn’t do it that way, this book has been quite an ordeal. In fact, as you will have heard in the preface, I pretty much gave up twice. Initially I just started writing down jokes and anecdotes that Jim and Barry told, and it grew from there. If I had the time to start this best seller again, which I can’t because I have ideas for several other books (which, yes, I will plan this time), I would start it that second time around with the Andy P Chapter. During the researching into this book, otherwise called drinking, eating, chatting and going to various sporting and social events, it had become clear to me that I wouldn’t have met half the protagonists at the level I have, without my little pal. So, I am coming to him late. I am sorry about that, but here I - Andrew Simon Pritchard. He is most definitely the man behind me having so many of these meetings and experiences and helping me get to know so many people I can now call good friends. Actually, he would also have always been in the book even if he is a little young. I would have had to write a bit about him because, for one thing, he would never forgive me if I hadn't but also because I see a lot of him these days so don’t need to make up an excuse for a meet up and a bite to eat. I can get his chapter started straight away. As I say he’s not strictly in the age bracket of the other stars of the book, but let's explore this strange little phenomenon. I say little because as mates we are bit different structurally. In many ways after that we are very much opposites. I am seventeen stone (‘and the rest’ I hear many

of the readers shouting in unison) and he is about 12 stone (‘no way’ I hear you all shouting now you’ve taken to the other strange phenomena of heckling while reading). I guess I am over 6ft 3inch and he is, I would guess about 5 foot nine. Little and large maybe? He's the same age as me, give or take six months, and I was recently (2015) best man at his third wedding. I have known him since 1981 and we have stayed pals through thick and thin since then. His life has been very different to mine and I am convinced this is one of the reasons we still enjoy each other’s company and are still great friends. Other reasons would include that we never seem to have a serious conversation and that we don’t do any business together. And then there’s a massive wealth discrepancy, but more on that later. The reason I met him in the first place was that I began working for that firm of accountants called Arthur Young McClelland Moores in my very first ever ‘proper’ job. They became Ernst & Young as you probably know, so that was a lucky call as we both then had some very good experiences when it became a larger business with more departments and more varying opportunities to be offered. He had started the year before me (he is about six months older like I said and I had done the Oxbridge exams at school which added another term to my schooldays). We were both in that same office in Silkhouse Court in Liverpool. As luck would have it, we ended up working on some jobs together. As the old saying goes, we knew how to work hard and also play quite hard. We are both quite fond of a glass or two of vino and the occasional Guinness and on certain occasions both at once – though not, of course, in the same glass. Who do you think we are? The department we worked in was auditing, or otherwise known as the checking over of other companies’ financial books for various reasons. He was, as I said, the year above me so on a number of jobs he was what was called the audit senior and I was his junior. To summarise the way, I broadly understood those roles; I messed about and he tried to stop me. He would much rather have joined in the messing around, but his role was actually to get the jobs done.

We always ended with a mad dash in the last few days to get the bulk of the work done and often simultaneous with extraordinary hangovers. While doing that last push he also probably ended up doing the bulk of the work. In hindsight, I should probably now say, “Sorry mate”. After a few years, we found ourselves working at the still small but fast-growing Iceland Frozen Foods and we were conducting their annual audit. I had been busy failing my exams again, so I was still an assistant and it was Andy’s job to devise and plan all the tests we were going to do on the financial systems of this fast growing, exciting company. As we all know, today Iceland is a massive organisation employing thousands of people and having about 750 stores but back at this point in time a handful of the main people worked in porta-cabins at Deeside. Alongside these cabins a big new build of state-of-the-art offices was well underway, and I was told very shortly after arriving there that they already knew the half-finished accommodation was not actually going to be big enough when finished. That was how fast they were growing. We had a ball on this job I must admit but we also had a big job to get through. We did work very hard, as I was only joshing before. It was a formative time for Iceland and every time we visited it, it had changed and grown almost beyond belief in the interim. Meeting the main people at that time meant we had from then on a close affinity with them having seen them at these early stages, when they were probably more approachable and informal. We formed long lasting associations and friendships on those visits. The following year we were about to be back there again and suddenly Andy accepted a job offer from Iceland itself and he changed from being the auditor of the company to being the financial controller of the same company: the ‘audited’ if you like. That was unusual. He sort of knew all the checks I was going to do on what had now become ‘his business’ as he had planned most of it before he left. It did give rise to some potential conflicts of interest. When he had started at Iceland and I arrived there soon after as the senior auditor, he made it clear very early on that he was keen (extremely keen I would say) to see the book that I had in my possession which included the details of the senior managers and directors’ salaries. Andy was very ambitious you see and he very desperately wanted a look at that ledger! He wanted to know what they were all on and it was part of my role to

make sure that no one (except authorised personnel) found out this information and at that stage Andrew Simon Pritchard was not yet one of those ‘authorised’ people. I think that rankled him a bit to say the very least. This was in the days before mobile phones, but in the big office where I was stationed to work there were fixed phones on the tables almost everywhere and they each had extension numbers written on them. I recall the one next to me was something like number 232 and Andy’s, in his office across the way, was maybe 230, and you will soon get the picture. When he came out to talk to me I knew it would be about the infernal salaries book so in anticipation I had placed my phone on the chair next to me slightly under the table. Just when he started to nag about letting him have a little ‘peak’ at the salaries, I reaffirmed this was not going to happen. This was a lot of fun for some reason, and I was wriggling with excitement. I had that weird restless legs feeling. This did not make him very happy and while he was threatening me with all sorts of other things that were also never going to happen, I lifted the receiver of the phone under the table on the chair next to me and dialled his extension without looking away or visibly moving above the table and hence without him noticing. ‘Bugger’, he muttered as he heard it trilling and he ran back to his office 30 feet away, inside a sort of glass box, shouting something along the lines that it wasn’t over and he would ‘be back’. A sort of accounting Terminator! As he arrived and picked it up, I put it down simultaneously at my end and carried on with studying the exciting pages in front of me. I was still wriggling. ‘Bastard’, I think I heard him say and he legged it back to resume the interrogation. You can guess what happened next. I got him to run back to his room twice more before he twigged. As it went dead that third time, he looked out at me and he spotted my arm directed under the desk and it dawned on him. I probably had a massive smirk on my face too, which many of my readers would recognise. He wanted to be very angry, but he also couldn’t hide the fact that it was seriously funny. Later that week he tried a different tactic. I had a room to myself this time as for some reason, we kept getting moved about, and he simply rushed in and tried to grab the damn ledger from the top of the desk right in front of me. It was very close to me so I was able to grab his sleeve and pull him towards me so I could then grab him around the neck and put him in a head lock. He is a strong little bugger but had no chance with the weight difference that I had mentioned earlier. He wouldn't let go of the book and I wouldn’t let go of

the grip I had on his neck. As we stood in the middle of the room, wrestling, Malcolm (you know, the boss, now Sir Malcolm, the Chief Executive and founder of the entire company) stopped in his tracks as he passed the doorway. ‘Everything OK?’, he enquired quizzically. We replied ‘Yes thank you, Malcolm’ in feeble unison. My version was the clearer, whereas Andy’s sounded a little stifled. Malcolm walked away and Andy did a sort of MMA tap out on my arm because in the stress of things I was squeezing a little too hard and denying him oxygen. Because I had made him look bad in front of the boss, actually probably both of us, he suggested that I give him the book to make amends, but I wasn’t going to fall for that one either. I don’t recall if he ever saw the book that year but it wasn’t long before he was in charge of the accounts department anyway as he rose quickly through the ranks. Eventually he was in fact jointly in charge of the whole company, many years after, and Malcolm’s right hand man and confidante - which I of course would have been had I stayed. So, at his peak he was one of the two main men together with Malcolm himself. Andy and I worked on jobs all over the UK and we learnt a lot every day about business. Having been quite entrepreneurial when I was younger I now just worked, had fun and played rugby. I spent two years in the training department at EY after that having a lot of fun and in 1998 I left and moved to another firm of accountants. Within two years of making that move Andy poached me to go and work for him at Iceland. Hence, we were back in touch a lot more regularly. Anyway, this is about him and not me. The guy has been enormously successful in an enormously successful business, and he is now absolutely bloody loaded. However, like many people in his position he will admit that it's not all roses. It's not until you know someone in his situation that you can see that it's actually sheer hell being rich. I’m sure it must be the subject of other more serious books but I would bet they conclude that being wealthy is not all it’s cracked up to be. He gets by though and Andy’s plan these days is have a bloody good time all the time and, in the process, treat his inner circle of pals very generously indeed! I wish I could think of ways to repay him but I can’t, and he doesn’t want me to anyway.

I have to say that he is seriously good at his new role: this enjoying himself stuff and he is remarkably generous to his mates (and to charities) and takes them (the mates) on all sorts of excursions all over the world, when they can make it. Sadly and bizarrely, I have to spend a lot of my time thinking of excuses as to why I can't make it! Don’t get me wrong, I do want to go, but I just can’t. I still have the kids to sort out and I think I am destined to work into my seventies as it is (if I can survive that long). I can’t go on amazing trips all the time because if I actually had any spare time I should use that time with the dear little ones – oh, and of course, Ali. I know what you are all screaming at the pages excitedly now: ‘But you will be rich when your completed book starts hitting the shelves!’. Well, that means you haven’t concentrated so far: the book is for charity. ‘But you will make money anyway, on the next book, your album, the podcasts, the movie of the book, and the Graham Norton show and all that!’ I know, I know, it’s very nice of you and thanks for that and I do hope you’re right, but I suspect you are deluded. Anyway, you’ve distracted me, so let’s get back to Andy. These days Andy shoots, he fishes, he goes to mega charity parties, he plays golf, he travels and so on. During all these “sporting” events, he has to compete with his wife, Patricia, who is pretty good at most things she takes on. She is definitely a very fine shot and an extremely competent big motor bike handler. It is so hard to say no when he wants you to come along, but I have to... sometimes…. nearly always. I think I do well at saying no the right number of times but at this point it would be so funny to let my wife Ali have a little time at the keyboard. She would probably say I am always away on trips. It’s funny how the human mind can become so confused like that and recollect things so wrongly. I am hardly ever away. My mates call me the Olympic Torch as I never go out (She hates that joke). Anyway, most of it is… er… business… or networking. I’ve just told her this and reminded her of the ‘Olympic Torch’ nickname and she said something cryptic about a clucking bell, I think, but I have no idea what she means.

Andy now goes out with all his pals, most of them quite wealthy and I like pretty much all of them. He has nearly always been a good judge of character, with one or two exceptions which we actually all fell for. He seems to have avoided people whose wealth has gone to their heads and they have become arrogant or dismissive and so on. Quite an achievement that. I think it’s vital that he has retained loyalty with a few old friends. He’s done well, he’s a good egg., and although a small one nevertheless a good one. So now when we are sort of back together again it just clicks and we are back in the groove: the groove of talking nonsense. I probably wouldn’t do anything he does in the same way that he does it, and vice versa, but that’s life and I don’t nag him and he doesn’t nag me. We make each other laugh. He doesn’t try to change me and I wouldn’t/couldn’t change him. But when one party in a relationship is richer than the other, some things become difficult. It’s very hard for example to go out for a night out with him as his drink’s rounds will involve expensive bottles of Chateau de Nerves 62 and Chateau de Bankbalance 84 while mine will involve trying to find the closest bottle to £24.99 (and that’s quite high to be honest). That’s after I have made that tricky selection of which wine - red or white? If that happens with us and it gets to my round he tells me off for ordering cheap wine and he says he will pay, but that’s awkward isn’t it, as I don’t like not being able to pay my way. But then it’s sort of paying ‘his way’ in that instance, if you get my drift. What often then happens, if it’s my turn to pay, is that he pays for the wine. I was in London with my old pal and business partner Arthur Marley in a gorgeous little restaurant called Blandford Comptoir in Marylebone. We know the owner, legendary Xavier Rousset, sommelier extraordinaire and lovely French chap. Because of Xavier’s pedigree, we were concerned about how our choice of wine might be viewed. Arthur put my mind at rest and immediately took over: ‘You put your finger exactly halfway down, then go up an inch’ he advised. ‘You will find what you need there both quality and price wise.’ He demonstrated the technique and his finger alighted on a lovely Pino Noir at a very reasonable, I don’t think, £55 a bottle. Unfortunately, the wine waiter had arrived behind him at just that moment. He hadn’t heard what I had said, but he was poised with pen and nifty little pad in hand. He could see where Arthur’s finger had landed and helped with: ‘A very good choice if I might say so, Sir’.

There wasn’t time for Arthur to say: ‘Jesus, better move my finger a bit lower.’ He ordered the Pino. We drank two bottles (sorry Mum) and in the event the wine ended up actually being excluded from our bill as a favour. On the face of it, a lovely gesture but for me, bad news, as Arthur would later feel we somehow had had a windfall that would justify the argument behind heading for a massive Chinese banquet later that night! Sorry, I digress. The best way to describe mine and Andy’s relationship, is that he invites me on a ‘once in a lifetime trip’ every month! Andy has been married three times. I think he likes wedding cake? You may never get to read this as they all have the right to veto stuff and when he sees this, he might not want it broadcast – but until then, let me carry on. Many decades ago, I knew his first wife, albeit fleetingly. A childhood sweetheart sort of relationship. His second wife was called Debbie and was, when I first met her and before they were married, in charge of the entire purchase ledger department at Iceland Frozen Foods! A big responsibility, a big cheese herself and a mighty efficient professional. She was in charge of many staff, mostly ladies, checking all the invoices that came in for the things the company bought, making sure that Iceland got the goods for the items and then paying them: a multimillion-pound entity in itself, and a very high-powered role. With Andy now being the Financial Controller, they worked a lot together. I believe they tried to fight their growing feelings for each other but eventually they cracked and ran away together, and in fact, they actually eloped. How exciting! The elopement had an immediate impact on my life. I don’t mean life changing but in the bloody shock I got. I was sitting wearing, as I’d call it, my tiny weeny flat in Birkenhead one night. When I say tiny, I do really mean that. It was the roof space in a detached Victorian house. The first part of my bit of the building was just a flight of stairs. First left at the top of this flight was my kitchen. Then the stairs carried on up to the next

floor and they were so steep that I usually went up on all fours. At the top were two rooms with a tiny bathroom between them. I used one as a lounge, and though it was cleverly done up have I said it was tiny. I could not stand up at all on the top floor and the ceiling was basically the roof of the building. What sort of halfwit at probably 6ft 4inches back then (I’ve shrunk) chooses a flat like this? Oh yes, the ‘me’ type. The top section all sloped down at the sides as it was the roof of the building and so much so that I could only put furniture in certain places. In the room on the right at the top I had a tv and a sofa bed, and that was my lounge. On the left was my bedroom with the curtains nearly always closed because the young buxom girl in the house opposite always seemed to be washing up topless. Yes, I have been very lucky at certain stages in my life. Anyway, one quiet night in (and that didn’t happen very often), the intercom buzzed on the wall outside my kitchen, making me jump quite alarmingly as it was very loud, and I didn’t really get visitors that much. For a start, most of my rugby mates wouldn’t fit in the place if I was also there. I walked out of the kitchen and picked up the receiver on the stairs. ‘Let me in, its Andy’. ‘Andy who?’ I didn’t really know that many Andys except my mate from work who lived miles away out in North Wales. ‘Andy… Andy Pritchard’ ‘What on earth - what the hell are you doing here?’ ‘Let me in and I’ll tell you - its bloody freezing out here’. Anyway, to cut a long story short, TWO people walked up the stairs that night, Andy and Debbie had eloped from their marriages to be together, and they stayed that way, mostly very happily I believe, for 25 years! When they eloped, I believe Debbie had only been married to someone else for a matter of weeks. I guess she tried to overlook her feelings and press on regardless. I really don’t know but it must have been a tough time for both of them but all in all they made the right decision and had 25 happy years.

We got on well and I saw them regularly. I even did a striptease at her 40th (an ‘accountant a gram’ as I called it) in front of her, about 40 other women and some quite startled restaurant staff. I won’t mention anymore as it can go in the autobiography when the demand forces me to write that. Now Andy is remarried, again happily. Patricia is a very strong German Italian lady and there is a larger age difference than ever before, but they are absolutely made for each other and blissfully happy. When she says jump, most people are already in the air and wondering whether it will be high enough. They might even be wondering if it is safe to land. She is scary, but I guess it comes with the nationality at times, so she can’t change that. Andy seems to like it. Fortunately, she is as mad as he is and the two of them are hell bent on spending their wealth ASAP. (In my opinion that is, no lawsuits please!) Is it a coincidence that his initials are actually ASP, which is so very close to ASAP? This third marriage meant that I had to attend four stag dos as the best man in 2015. I won’t go into them in depth as that’s a further separate book again (actually someone has gone and, rather annoyingly, done a dumbed down version of them called Hangovers 1, 2 and 3). In summary they took one whole year out of my life and aged me about five years. Really, I mean it. They actually shortened my life, left me in crippling debt and landed me with recurring nightmares and yes, of course I would do them all again! The first 15 minutes in Ibiza sums it up. I checked into the magnificent hotel that Andy had paid for and sunk into the Jacuzzi I had on my own balcony (yes it was mine). I also had another one in the bathroom! Within a minute of slouching down and before I could say ‘this is the life’ my phone binged the infuriating text noise it makes right next to my ear. I should never have looked at it. ‘Downstairs in 15 minutes - we are going out’ I’m not sure whether we ever came back. I saw that room for about 6 more hours in the next four days. It would have made more sense financially if I had slept rough.

And yes, as I said, I would do it again. I loved pretending I was young and I don’t care if I looked ridiculous. These days, we have settled down into a slightly more sedate routine. He has moved to Jersey where he is undertaking the enormous refurbishment of a massive house that will take ‘two years’ (and the bloody rest) and I am working my whatsits off. I don’t know why but I think it has dawned on him that I can’t go on the ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences every month so he only invites me to things occasionally. I think maybe he has found some better mates too who can also afford the Chateau de Window 86. I wouldn’t blame him. I’ve been with him to football matches including the Champions League final (I didn’t even like football then!), I’ve been fishing in Iceland, and I’ve been on a luxury yacht in the Greek islands, and so much more. Sorry it might have been quicker to list the things I haven’t done. What an amazing set of experiences. Oh, and his bloody wedding – oh, my good lord, let’s not forget that! It was three days of insane lavish festivities at the Four Seasons in Hampshire. It was enormously extravagant, and as a result I now have three daughters that are excitable all the time as they think that is what a wedding entails. Girls, listen, weddings are not like that. It was make-believe. Weddings involve booking the rugby club and doing a yard of ale in front of all your friends and relatives and also the first team as they have had a home game that day. My three sons also think that that was what a wedding entails and I worry that they in turn worry that their future partners will be expecting something like that. Don’t panic lads, you are still at liberty to try and do what I nearly did: throw a surprise wedding for your loved one at, you guessed it, the rugby club. Thankfully, I think, the surprise got out in my case and I was talked out of it - big mistake. It’s not easy to describe Andy and Patricia’s three-day event, but the folks that were there will NEVER ever forget it. They have continued their generosity to this day and if I could, I would spend a lot more time with them and somehow pay them back? I’d learn magic tricks, juggling or something. Of course, I will be able to change all that when this and my future books take off, but for the time being its work, work and then what was it again, oh yes: work.

But for all that, I don’t seem to be half as busy as Andy is now he is ‘retired’. He tears around the world having this meeting and then that flight, then this dinner then another flight and I don’t exactly think that they seem to be relaxing in any way at all during their retirement. They somehow seem scared to slow down. I have to say that, despite all the amazing lavish trips we have had together, the spontaneous off the cuff nights have also been very memorable, and one sticks in the mind when we spent £43 on a night out in Bangor! And when I say we, this was somehow my turn to pick up the bill. Andy had some lame excuse about forgetting his wallet, and he promised to pay me back. You can’t beat unplanned beers and banter. So that’s Andy and Patricia, sneaking into this book, which is mostly about older folk, by virtue of their impact on the book and by my fear of not including them. Actually, my fear of Patricia. I would batter Andy in a fight but me against her – it would be a bookies’ nightmare, or actually not, as the favourite would win, and that favourite would not be me. I can say that here as she won’t bother to read this far, as she will be off on a charity do or some madcap business idea or travelling to Germany for a beer. “Sit still woman, will you and read a book!” Finally, I may need to tell you about Andy P’s sporting prowess? Non-existent. Only kidding, as he is a very fine cricketer indeed and good mostly at ball sports such as golf, squash and so on. An amazing throwing arm too. We had a competition amongst the EY cricket team once at Neston to see who could throw a cricket ball the furthest and he won. I really, really wanted to win and if there was no limit on how many throws you could have, I would still be there to this day, around the clock, trying to beat the distance he whipped the hapless ball that night. Little bugger. The ball was too light for me and that’s why I couldn’t get a grip on it. So, thanks for the memories, Andy Pritchard and where’s my £21.50?

Chapter Seven - Malcolm Walker When I started on the audit of Iceland Frozen Foods, I didn’t really recall what Malcolm Walker looked like. In fact, I probably didn’t know, and I made a rather bizarre unthinking assumption This led to things being mixed up in my head during the first few weeks and months that I was there. Basically, I got two people remarkably mixed up. Whenever a smart tanned chap in cream slacks and a navy blazer walked past me, generally in or near the area where the directors were based, I assumed it was Malcolm and I sort of doffed my cap to the individual in a pathetic reverential sort of way. On the other hand whenever this other sort, a scruffy little bugger, walked past I would grunt ‘alright mate’ or something along those lines assuming that he was the gardener. You’ve guessed what I was doing already I imagine. The smart beblazered individual was the chauffeur (Hedley, I think) and the scruff was none other than Sir Malcolm Walker joint founder of the fast-growing Iceland empire! Actually, he wasn’t so much a scruff (backtracking a bit here) but his thick head of hair, still very much in evidence to this day was very hard to control and it gave him a, shall we say, outdoorsy look. I didn’t tend to judge books by their covers, but at that point I failed dismally, and I had made some over simplistic assumptions there. I really didn’t even think Malcolm was scruffy at all and I recall clearly that he had that thick mop of hair, but he certainly dresses very smartly now - but that’s just how I remember it. Malcolm’s’ remarkable life story is documented in his book (Best Served Cold) and, as it all there, I felt a bit of a chump when he agreed to meet up with me and I started asking daft questions. I realised during our chat that most of the questions I wanted answers to were covered in the book and it was obvious that I hadn’t read it. (Readers, let this be a lesson for you when you are next planning to meet me in the near future). I actually had but couldn’t remember lots of it. It was good to see him again though. He looked well, very slim, was casually dressed but, to be honest, he also looked a bit knackered. I asked him how he kept fit, expecting him to say that he still trained with a mutual personal trainer friend of ours in Ian Lloyd (a walking anatomy lesson) but no, he

had given all that up. He simply hated training, so he counted himself fortunate that the weekend walk he now did seemed to be doing the trick. As well as that, he probably never sits still and is still heavily involved in the running of the business which is no mean feat at 73 (his age according to a woefully brief Wikipedia page). I had one small similarity with Malcolm that I had never thought of until I re-read the book. (Best-selling authors is what you are clearly thinking). But, ah-ha, there was something else, as like him I had had a dormant period where my entrepreneurial/manurial leanings were put on hold. My stint at EY was like his at Woolworths, but to him, Woolworths was his university. He said it might be a cliche but it taught him so much, at what some people call the University of Life. He didn’t believe that anyone else in the village he came from in Yorkshire actually went to University and hence Woollies was an excellent grounding for him. They were tough times for him at Woolies though. You could be told at the end of one week that you were to be at another store the following Monday and they would provide a hotel room for the Sunday night only. During the Monday, your first day at a new venue, you also had to find your accommodation for that night. It sounds daft but I have met so many professionals of that era who say that it was great grounding in business to be at Woolies! Malcolm is a no-nonsense type of guy who tells it as it is. He is a Yorkshireman after all, and they just want to get to the point, which when you are discussing business is often ‘is there owt in it for us?’ They don’t chuff about and they don’t suffer fools (i.e. anyone not from Yorkshire!) I have never really had any great awareness of whether someone is more important or not than me or whether someone is upper class or lower class, black or white or whatever. My class and race radar is sort of switched off, or maybe broken, or even was never installed properly. I see folk as all humans. I don’t speak differently to anyone because they are important or different or anything. Malcolm is like this and I think he likes that characteristic in other people. Back when I mistook Malcolm for Hedley, I was nervous, but I wasn’t being a hypocrite.

I venture that is why I have always had a bit of a rapport with him: a bit of comic banter. I am sure he would tire of me after ten minutes though because I don’t talk about business enough for him, whereas he absolutely loves it. ‘Right, that’s enough of that, let dog see rabbit’. I do know whether he had actually ever said that, or I just made it up. I sense that he likes cheeky people as well, people that don’t ‘kowtow’ to him but do however listen when it is time to. Yes, he definitely likes a bit of banter back, although I’m not too sure he likes having his bottom slapped by my wife, but as she can’t remember it it doesn’t count. He did squeal a bit though, but then I don’t suppose it happens that often. I would imagine that many people are terrified of him especially at work, as after all it is Sir Malcolm Walker - the business guru and charity giant. The best summary of what he achieved is in his own book. He built a business from nothing to sales of over £5 billion. He employed 30,000 people and probably the same again in suppliers and supporting companies. He had paid millions out to shareholders and tens of millions to charities. He can surely sleep at night and that’s why he is SIR Malcolm after all. The beginnings of how he and Peter Hinchcliffe started off make a great tale and they were helped along the way by the Woodwards, namely Bill and Norman (and Bill’s son Nigel), who had a frozen food distribution business of the same name. They rented cold store space out to Malcolm and Peter in the early days. The Woodwards were, I think, like father figures at the time and the venue for the second Iceland store was largely selected because Woodwards had a cold store near there. When Iceland’s growth led to the need for its own cold store, the Woodwards stepped up and helped again. They took shares and contrary to Malcolm’s fears they did not interfere, and they remained shareholders for around seven years until they were bought out and everyone was happy. They did well themselves as they had helped to launch the giant, and so why wouldn’t everyone be happy? That’s great isn’t it, and I’d better get back to Malcolm, especially as I have just ruined a load of my material for chapter 11, which is about the Woodwards! Malcolm and I digress for a second when I suggest that decent people have largely gone these days and you can no longer rely on the handshake. Actually, he says, most of the suppliers to Iceland are still working on a handshake, and they don’t do that many contracts. I am surprised, as in my experiences trust has largely gone but apparently many supermarkets work like that at the moment.

It’s not strictly the same as what I am taking about but interesting. I’m taking about people who say they will pay you back but then decide not to. We move on. His charitable work has been extraordinary. It has helped many charities over the years but in more recent times he has turned his attention to charities linked to Alzheimer’s disease. His wife Ranny, his childhood sweetheart from around the age of 14/15, was stricken with it and Malcolm’s resulting charitable efforts have generated tens of millions in the search for a cure and to help future sufferers and future generations. You are talking in excess of £24m probably. While trying to raise the original money to fight the disease, he directly contacted Professor Nick Fox who is a leading neuroscientist and then tried to raise further funds to get the leading UK experts together in a bespoke centre to research into the cause of Alzheimer’s and maybe one day a cure. Malcolm had a brilliant brainwave when he thought about the 5p tax that came in on plastic carrier bags. The supermarkets had to give that to charity at the time so he set about asking the leading supermarket chains to join forces with him in the fight against the disease. From Sainsburys it was a ‘no’ (maybe they had their reasons, but I can’t imagine what), but others such as Morrisons came on board and it raised another £14m: enough to start to attract further matched funding and find the last few millions to get a neuroscience centre built. That’s amazing and in all his charitable efforts Malcolm always got his team and his company right behind all the efforts. Back when I worked there, I remember cycling to as many Iceland stores as I could in one day to help raise funds. I also remember that at one time custard pies were being pushed into people’s faces all over the offices. They were shaving foam I think as when I went to meet ‘someone in reception for me’ one day I got one full in the face as I came out of the stairwell. It was so good for morale and got everyone behind it. I’m not even sure how the fundraising worked with those pies, but it just made working there so much fun. This translates into results in more than one way and Iceland has been voted best UK employer to work for more than once in my recollection. Going back to shortly after I had handed in my notice at Iceland in 1992 to leave and go traveling around the world, there was some sort of get together at the head office in Deeside. It was for an organisation set up for people under 40 that had made it to be CEO of a listed company, I think. There was much hectic activity

around the place as they made sure the head office looked spick and span as this event was to be held at Iceland’s Deeside Head Office. It was not just offices there, as there was also a two million cubic feet cold store on site so it was all hands to the pump. We had to make sure for a start that there was no litter anywhere in the warehouse. That wasn’t easy with millions of boxes and packaging passing through the place on a daily basis. As you might recall, I was the controller of the finances for the distribution side of the company and Richard Horswill was the manager of the Deeside depot. I’m on the tall side but this bugger fell asleep in a greenhouse with his feet in a growbag under a dripping tap. As we were chatting Malcolm came around the corner. ‘It’s looking really quite good Richard, well done’, he didn’t notice me so was probably forgetting who I was again. Easily done. In my usual style I interjected: ‘Actually Malcolm, we have been dropping bits of litter around the place all day just to try and make it look a bit more realistic.’ I thought to myself that even I didn’t know where this nonsense came from all the time at such short notice: ‘Ah yes, you, you cheeky sod, I heard you were buggering off and leaving us. Hallelujah!’ ‘Next Wednesday Malcolm, off to Bombay and then the rest of the world beckons’ ‘I can’t deny that I wish I could come with you’ he said rather unexpectedly. ‘If you can find fifteen hundred quid by Sunday you’re in, Malcolm’ I added. ‘Ha Ha’ he retorted ’I could probably manage that but I can’t leave this place’ He was right and how prophetic those words were. He hasn’t, to this day, left the place apart from a couple of sabbaticals which you’ll find out all about if you read his book. I do keep telling you). I ask now whether he struggled with that work/ life thing. But he reveals to me that he actually did get it right while accepting that a lot of his friends and colleagues didn’t.

He never worked weekends and he proudly tells me that he never missed the sports day, school plays and so on. That’s remarkable as his work life has spanned periods when work / life balance was not really understood. Apparently, Peter Hinchliffe was a morning person and Malcolm came in later and worked into the night so there was one of them there all the time and their partnership worked. It is a long debate I suppose but do we work too hard now and do we spend too much time at work? He is adamant that retiring is bad for you and I know that he has a point. How many people stop what they are doing and within months they are ill or indeed dead? But I think the Dalai Lama said something like: ‘We work all our lives to make money at the expense of our health and then we have to spend all that wealth trying to get our health back’. I’ve probably got that horribly wrong, and he would have said it better than me for a start, but it sounds about right to me and deep enough for Dal, as his mates call him, to come out with. We all do it: work ourselves to death and then wonder why we did it when we realise it’s nearly all over! During the final throes of writing this drivel, (err, sorry, future best-seller) a large virus beset the world and one of its legacies might be that large swathes of the ‘developed’ world change many of their ways of working. We will see. They may not. Malcolm did try to retire but he had some bad luck and some bad experiences along the way and I suspect that he is now resigned to continuing on at the wonderful beast he created. But why not, he enjoys it. As of today’s date, he and his son Richard along with long serving Tarsem Dhaliwal and others I’m sure Malcolm can slowly let go of the reigns. They are very bright guys and still full of energy. Did I just say that Malcolm was slowing down?

He has been getting out and about lately and he did head up

Everest in his late 60s and is adamant that it was a bloody daft idea. Yes, he absolutely hated it and he didn’t think he would have found it any different when he was younger. He reached the South Col at 23,000 feet. I’ve been up to 17,500 feet and that was no fun and at 32 years of age, so I can imagine what he means.

Many of his answers about that Everest trip are surprising me. I thought he would tell me how amazing it was. He is dead honest. His son Richard probably could have gone and summitted but he stayed with Dad, and helped create a magical tale. He also was enticed to try and trek to the South Pole and he informs me that was even worse! But he has seen some amazing things even if he wasn’t too comfortable at the time. I guess in retail they have a lot of fun and there’s a lot of adrenalin and all that but, in my opinion, there is a danger that they don’t ever realise their personal ambitions. (Maybe their personal ambition is to immerse themselves in retail all their lives and to be rich). When they are younger, I think it’s too easy to forget that they will be older when they finally have time to do the things they plan. The Director immediately above me in Iceland announced, when I told him what I was going travelling, that he intended to retire at 52 and sail around the world. I don’t think he ever did. Many people said at that time, when I told them my plans, that they would do something like I was about to do when they were older but the funny thing is I don’t think they either felt like it or felt up to it when the time came. I am so glad that I did it when I did. It changed my life path and I truly believe for the better. Getting older affects everyone slightly differently but at whatever age it happens, we all get risk averse if we are lucky enough to live to our older days. We all fancy the couch instead of the nightclub and yes, while that can happen at many different ages it will undoubtedly happen. Even in the extreme cases where the spirit is always willing the body will let you down and I can only think of Peter Stringfellow as an exception here as I believe he partied until the end. Oliver Reed too, and maybe most players of the game of rugby union! Oh, and Andy & Patricia, don’t forget them.

Back in 1992, I made my own decision that life was going by too quickly and I needed to get off the roundabout for a while. I expected my Mum to be furious, sad and so on and my Dad to be upbeat and say ‘Go for it son; have a beer on me’. After all he had given up medicine to try farming when he was about 36 and that’s quite a gamble and a challenge. But actually, when I announced to him that I was heading off to Bombay (he was 62 at that stage in his life) he said I was totally mad. ‘What about your pension, and what about your Iceland shares?’ But I knew what I was doing was right, and I did it and I don’t regret it one bit. I refer to it as my early midlife crisis. Meanwhile Malcolm was to spend a life in frozen food and bloody hell, is he, and was he, good at it. You so seriously have to read his book. It’s not a patch on this, but it’s still an interesting read. He got pretty much thrown out of his own creation at one stage and had to watch while another group of retailers, who thought they knew what they were doing, came in and cocked it up royally. It’s an amazing story of how they made a pig’s ear of running it. It gives a marvellous insight into the machinations of the cut-throat business world. When Malcolm and Andy P regained control, they knew exactly what they had to do to turn it back around again and they did it without faltering. They orchestrated a few very basic and very clever manoeuvres. They did it quickly and brutally and it worked, and many people have benefitted from the Iceland success again. Whatever I have said about work / life balance Malcolm and Andy and all their cronies had a great time running that company. They loved retail and the fast pace and the hustle and bustle. They have both then fitted in some serious adventures, Malcolm’s Everest is one and Andy has been virtually everywhere since he sold his shares. Malcolm has owned or had access to a private jet for much of his adult life. Not many people can lay claim to that. I am discussing him as if we are best mates, but I actually don’t know him that well as I am sure he will be muttering as he reads this. I am told by closer friends, who have spent many years with him, that he is OCD, and this has made him tidy and ordered beyond what is generally seen as normal.

I once went on that jet (a few times actually) and prior to take off and in the swanky lounge that often precedes a private jet flight, I was warned more than once to go to the loo while I had the chance. I thought this was a bit odd. I was a grown up and it had been weeks since I had wet myself. We were pouring cold beer down like the four-minute warning had gone off and it was a two and a quarter hour flight with more alcohol flowing freely so maybe that was why we were being warned about loos. Maybe the one on the jet got full easily? It turned out that the order was because Malcolm didn’t like people using his loo! This immediately put one thought into my head: ‘I must use that loo’. I think Andy P whispered to me that number ones were actually OK as that was almost unavoidable but number twos - no way Jose. Here’s that same comical urge coming over me again, as I now needed to use that loo (or at least make it seem very likely that I had) and Malcolm needed to find out. Later on, during the flight I sat on the loo, half cut and with my trousers around my ankles while someone photographed me while also convulsed with childish laughter. I think they sent the photo to Malcolm later that night, but I can’t be sure. They might have sent it to someone who they knew would show Malcolm, again I’m not sure. For the record that did happen, but I have heard other people telling the same story with them in the hot seat, as it were (Steve Stuart for one), but that’s as maybe. I did it and it was very funny, and of course the copious amounts of inflight alcoholic drink helped. I was recently appointed to the board of the Liverpool Society of Chartered Accountants (LSCA) and we were looking for a high-profile speaker to address the next business members meetings. I sent Malcolm an email and I bet you can guess what’s next.

I wrote something along the following lines: Hi Malcolm, I hope you are well. You might be surprised to learn that I am now on the board of the LSCA and in September we are seeking a high-profile guest speaker for our quarterly get-together - blah blah , chat chat, and anyway can you give me Tarsem Dhaliwal’s email address please? He took it well. He called me a cheeky bugger and then said he would do it. A week or so later, he found out he was in Italy at that time and hence couldn’t now do it. This might be a good point to tell you that all the big bosses of big companies haven’t got a clue what they are doing from day to day because someone else arranges it all for them (Kathy in Malcolm’s case) but the bosses always forget that. She must have informed him of where he would be when he told her what he had gone and arranged on his own and unsupervised. Groups of PA’s must roll their eyes when they get a chance to chat about the antics of their bosses. ‘What’s he like, he tried to make a sandwich on his own the other day bless him, we are still rebuilding the kitchen…. Etc’ Anyway, my attempts at humour then came back to bite me. Tarsem (Chief Exec at Iceland now, and he’s done well, starting as a young Birkenhead lad- in fact, so good looking that in a rugby match you would never get tired of punching him) informed me that he was hoping that Malcolm couldn’t do the event for me so he could then very happily refuse me for asking him second. Brilliant. Anyway, the smooth entertainer Nick Canning (joint CEO at that stage) did a splendid job and all’s well that ended well. When I went for that coffee with Malcolm, all my great plans got forgotten. I had planned to try and get into the restaurant there for lunch as it is absolutely amazing and I hoped to get a freebie. Back when I worked there it was an unbelievable space. I recall Malcolm had a Harley Davidson on show in there and I think the place was called Roxys. It surely deserved a Michelin Star! The food was amazing and of course heavily discounted and it was like a night out for me.

I meant to ask him if he actually is a ‘fusspot’. I got this from Johnny Prestt (chapter 10) when he told me the tale of the dolphin fish. It was on a chopping board on a boat in 1997/8 and Malcolm rang the ship’s operator to make sure the paint on the chopping board didn’t have any lead in it. When I leave that meeting at his plush offices, I realise I missed a few bits out and, being too scared to ring him again, I ask Andy P. “What about sport and hobbies for Malcolm?” “Well,” he says, “I have a classic about football. He totally hates football. “He was once introduced to Rafa Benitez who was the very successful Liverpool Football Club manager. People standing nearby who knew the people being introduced to each other held their breath. Malcolm kept it simple and told Rafa he had never heard of him and he hated football.” Malcolm also hates golf but does seem to relish sports where there is a death such as shooting and fishing. That Andy Ps’ words by the way Malcolm! He is certainly a good shot, and I have seen that, but I have never been fishing with him. I’m not good enough anyway, even though I occasionally land a big one (see later). Andy reminds me that Malcolm also likes a nice car. I remember when I was at Iceland and I got my lovely new Vauxhall something or other (I’m not into my cars. It was red). I think Malcolm had a Bentley Mulsanne Turbo: very classy. He changed it shortly after that and got something also amazing, sporty and so on. I did tell you we had so much in common. Enter Rob Andrew stage left. This is not the Rob Andrew you might have heard of, so please, calm down ladies, as it’s not the very good-looking England rugby player from the 1980s and 90s. This is the hard drinking, scratch golfing, wine quaffing, fashion icon of the same name. Stand down ladies. The bright trousers will initially attract you, rather like some of the exotic birds in Attenborough documentaries, but in this case you will soon see through the show and be disappointed.

Yet, hold on, one bird did fall for that show. Rob did find a mate and one, as they say in lads’ chats, out of his league. I don’t just mean he’s division 2 while Julie his wife is division 1. I mean Julie is up in the Champions League and Rob is wading through mud every Sunday in the Sunday League. Anyway, back when Rob had not yet achieved the heights he now has in business, he was working at Iceland. I think he was in charge of spare car keys and topping up the windscreen squirter bottles, or some such. Iceland’s legendary charitable efforts that year were, I think, still supporting the Peto Institute. Rob came up with an idea to wash the Directors (expensive) cars for charity. I’ve just realised that Rob might not want me to tell this tale. Oh what the hell, he’ll be fine. He is up for anything. It was all going well, and so I won’t build it up, I’ll just go straight to the punchline. It was all going well until his foot got trapped in one of the cars as he stumbled. The foot fell onto the accelerator. The lavish, automatic vehicle, with its engine quietly running, revved up frantically and took flight only to plough immediately into another similarly innocent and expensive car causing tens of thousands of pounds of damage. Oh Lord, Rob. Now I’ve written it down, it isn’t actually that funny. Rob was quite seriously hurt, but you know what they say about publicity. His career has been meteoric since then. He is a very funny guy and maybe the injuries led to his bizarre taste in colourful trousers and some subliminal urge to disguise the blood and bruising. Attenborough would be able to explain it better. Anyway, for those concerned at this juncture, Rob and Julie are fine. Poor Julie. I also didn’t cover restaurants with Malcolm. I didn’t really dare to ask him, probably because my foray into that sector had cost me everything myself. On the face of it he seems to have done well in that sector. He went into the restaurant world with entrepreneur and pal Steve Walker (no relation) when he invested in the Piccolino chain. That seems to be going very well. He has also set his own up, with the Opera Grill in Chester. It seems too huge in my mind to make a profit, but it’s pretty spectacular inside and what do I know. I think, if I was Malcolm, I would be reading my own book and reminding myself of the lessons he tells about his diversifications in his early days.

Sir Malcolm has been there, done that and got the tee shirt. What a life so far! Finally, while I cannot understate how much he has done for charity I do now anticipate that when we next meet he will tell me that his hardest charitable act to date was ‘buying your ruddy awful goddam book.’ And really, finally, I read recently that he had abseiled down the Shard for charity. Say no more. Here’s Prince William meeting, now, Sir Malcolm.

Chapter Eight Jim Davies OMG. At last, I have managed to pin down Jim Davies for a coffee and it turns into a full cooked breakfast at Home restaurant in Oxton Village. Bit of a free plug there, so before I publish, I will call in and check what freebie I get for the mention, otherwise I will need to remove it and say we dined elsewhere. To be honest, I am absolutely exhausted after the encounter with James Davies OBE. He rushes from one subject to another, one anecdote after another, just like a road runner doing standup. He co-founded DWF the now huge multinational legal stock market quoted law firm. You could easily forgive someone who had done all that if they then were to talk about themselves all the time, but he won’t. Same old pattern with this lot. For much of the meeting he raves about other people and doesn't want to talk too much about himself. He hones in on how marvellous Barry and Geoff are and Peter Bullivant and actually everyone else in this book. It’s hard to drag out from him stuff about Jim Davies himself though. That is truly remarkable really for a man who is ten weeks into being the High Sheriff of Merseyside for a year There he is, being installed as the High Sheriff of Merseyside. What an honour for me as well as I was actually there! He has also been awarded the OBE for services to charity and industry. I get to find out a little bit Jim with his charming wife, Shirley about Jim and DWF but only really that it was started in 1977 from where we digress very quickly on to Liverpool's first win in the European Cup against Borussia Mönchengladbach. Oh, does Jim love his football! What doesn’t he know about it and who from the football community, doesn’t he know?

He recalls the tale of flying out to the game just mentioned with a gang of other UK business fellers with Sterling Airways and one of the wags on board organised ‘a whip round for the drive’. By the way, ‘wag’ carries the old meaning of ‘gentleman who thinks he’s a rather amusing wit, but really isn’t’, rather than the modern version of ‘wives and girlfriends’ and I’m pretty sure there were not many of the fairer sex who accompanied these fellows on overseas football trips. The pilot that night must've been slightly bemused to be handed a bag of £90 in notes and slummy together with a few friendly pats on the back and ‘There you go old chap, have a drink on us, well done’. Jim is clearly very fond of his mates and loves to tell stories about them and particularly, it must be said, Barry. Here comes one: Barry arrived home one night after an office party so late that it was actually nearing 6 o'clock the following morning. As his trousers were half down (probably with change flying everywhere) Mrs Owen awoke and sat up asking him what on earth the time was. He replied very quickly, while now pulling his trousers back up: ‘Not to worry , darling, I’m just getting an early start at the office’. Apparently when he did arrive in the office (he had to go there, obviously once he had said that, didn’t he) he couldn’t last any longer and the cleaners were very surprised to see the boss with his head down on the desk fast asleep. Jim tells me how back in the day the Mason Owen parties were legendary. I find that funny as when I met both Barry and Geoff they never mentioned anything about wild parties choosing instead to paint a picture of a wholesome family friendly company. I was getting images of Jane Austin’s’ drawing room when I talked to Barry, but now, as I talk to Jim, it's more like Caligula or Up Pompeii that I’m getting. Maybe I'll pop back and see Barry and Geoff and give them a second chance to come up with the juicy stuff. ‘Oh, there's another belting story’ begins Jim again.

This one is about a judge friend of his who is taken ill and is diverted into a hospital in Liverpool on his way to a function. The scouse nurse takes his particulars as he sits on a trolley bed still in his dinner shirt. He had actually been on his way to celebrate being promoted within the legal world, to the next level of judge as it were, so it was a shame that he probably wasn’t going to make it to the event. ‘Name?’ says the (very scouse) nurse. ‘Address?’ After a couple more questions he is getting impatient as he imagines the predinner drinks ending and the guests trundling through to dine. Then she asks him his profession. He doesn’t mind answering this one. He is very proud of his recent promotion within the judge world and announces voluminously: ‘Circuit Judge’ ‘Yer Wha?’ she retorts, to which he responds even more clearly: ‘CIRCUIT ……… JUDGE’ She pauses for a minute, pen floating over the form, trying to digest what the chap from Downton Abbey is trying to say. She can’t be sure but thinks she gets the gist of it. ‘OK, tell yer wha, I’ll just put electrician for now’. This is Gold Dust I'm thinking, up there with the Mark Knopfler tale, more please Jim but can we also talk about you and your achievements very soon. They just keep coming thick and fast and Jim doesn't seem to be running out of tales at all. I'm regretting ordering the full breakfast as I'm having to eat all the time while trying to take notes. I’m failing miserably. He has long finished his bacon sandwich and tells me I must make sure that people like Dave Ramsey get a cameo appearance and of course I must definitely include the Artists Club (the AC) as so much comes out of there. And don't forget to ask Barry about Willy Gilbertson Hart. At the rate I'm going here, this book is going to run to two volumes. Actually, I already know Dave Ramsey. I’ve met him quite a few times at rugby stuff and at the Artists Club and on a ski trip about 15 years ago. I decide that I’m on a deadline now so maybe I’ll give him a call and ask him to preview the book before I publish it. That way I can loads more material for the book! In the event I can’t get hold of him and have to stick with the material I have.

On the subject of the AC I think Jim is quintessentially what that institution is all about. A very fine old-fashioned institution in Eberle Street, Liverpool: a gentlemen only club founded in 1877 and to this day a respectable hideaway for well to do chaps whose businesses run themselves and they enjoy a spot of red wine and banter away from ‘the missus’. Probably totally out of kilter with today’s new order but it should be left alone: it’s a free country and it does no harm! Sorry, I’m just saying it how it is, but that’s definitely 50% of my potential market now gone! The place has been at its current location since 1889. With oak panel walls and original artwork, it has the unique feature of an oil painting of every President since it started, hanging within the club. It has a snooker room, a small bar and a very large dining area with round tables and silver service. I have been a member there myself for many years now but don't get there as much as I should. I used to get there more when I wasn’t a member. Back in those days I would get invited and whatever the occasion, it would always turn into a fairly heavy drink. I think that’s why I don’t go now, I’m too scared! The club did have, and still has I feel, a reputation as being a bit of a northern version of the Bermuda Triangle. You could pop in there with the honest intention of having a light lunch with a couple of pals but would emerge bleary eyed and reeling into the daylight at 4:30 pm wondering what on earth had happened. Your wife or other half would no doubt be wondering exactly the same thing when a shambles of a man somehow returns home. Twenty or thirty years ago, we would get in there occasionally for a pre-planned celebration and have a tremendous lunch and a few gentle drinks: beers, wine and copious bottles of port. Then we would head into Liverpool to try and stay upright and carry on the theme. Our chairman from Birkenhead Park rugby club back in those days, Paul Young, not the singer but a famous architect, would be in the centre of all the celebrations with his waistcoat straining under the two or three extra stone he was carrying! He sadly left us at a very early age and the AC always reminds me of our annual trips there with him: clonking gin and tonics and raucous male-only company. Sorry ladies, this isn’t sexist I promise, but this is just what happened and I’m sure you’re glad it all happened there and not in the general view of the public and decent folk.

Most of my contemporary pals from Birkenhead Park rugby club loved going there now and again and they would take some of the younger rugby lads as their guests. I ended up in one of those groups several years ago. The way the AC works at lunchtime is that you fill up the tables as you go. On this occasion there were nine of us from the rugby club and there was a gentleman intending to have his lunch there who was coincidentally invited to join us at our table as the tenth person. Poor chap. There is no other way of putting this but he just got horribly, terribly plastered. He was a shambling mess. He sat next to me and absolutely loved the rugby banter and joined in on all the drinking games until he was helped down the stairs into a taxi singing along on his own to arrangement of: ‘Why was he born so beautiful…..’ Very unusually for me I was there the following Thursday for something else and bumped into him. Immediately I enthused: ‘Hello Peter, how the devil are you?’ I was thinking he would probably embrace me with a: ‘Chris, how the devil are you? I wonder if you can inform me how I got home last week?’ Instead, he said: ‘I'm sorry, do I know you?’ Awkward. But I’m not one to give up and I hid the disappointment that I had failed to make any mark on his memory, and I reminded him of his afternoon with the rugby club. He was with me immediately: ‘Oh, good lord’ he said, ‘last Thursday! The whole of that day is a complete mystery to me. I'm actually banned from coming down the Artist Club by my darling wife so today she thinks I've gone to the dentist. I just came to see if I had any outstanding bills here’. As an aside here, all the members for some bizarre reason think their wives are oblivious to reality and that their clever ruses have her baffled, whereas in fact they are just humouring the old duffers and they go to the golf club or play bridge or shop.

I reminded him of some of the details such as the penalty drinks of Kummel because he was caught drinking with his right hand by mistake and so on. ‘It sounds bloody awful,’ he replied ‘ no wonder I can't remember a single sodding thing’. Anyway, he then said how rude it was of him and he needed to sort of re-introduce himself: ‘I'm Peter’ he said and he reached into his inside jacket pocket and gave me a card. The card was one of mine: Chris Wainwright ACA. It at least proved that I had been there with him the previous week even if I had failed to register an impression! His Artist Club mates at the bar laughed loudly at him and poked fun at the apparent revelation that he only had that one tatty old jacket in his wardrobe! ‘Bugger Off’, he replied wittily. I went on a ski trip with the Artists Club in the 1990s but I can’t recall more than one or two events from the entire week. I do remember one Colin Brennand arriving at the first evening’s drinks with his wife and also another couple. ‘Who are they Colin’, one of the group whispered to him when he had the chance. He whispered: ‘Bloody next-door neighbours - they’re not on the AC trip are they?’ ‘Are they Berkshire, we don’t even get on. When we went around this morning to ask them if we could leave a key with them (there’s no one else), they said hard luck they are going on holiday themselves. After a few questions it only turns out that they are also skiing in the Alps and, worse still, in the same resort and then unbelievably the same hotel here in Morzine. In fact it couldn’t get any worse, they are in the next bloody room. We even gave them a soddin’ lift to the airport!’ This caused a lot of amusement. For a while the other couple seemed absolutely fine but after a few drinks they had a massive row with each other, left and we never saw them again. But come on Jim, I’ve been distracted here. That was your fault. Tell me about Jim the sportsman, the family man, the businessman. What’s the life story? He gives it to me in about two minutes.

I worked for Peter Bullivant, lovely man, and then set up on my own - that’s it! Towards the end of this chapter, I am feeling like I still need a bit more on the man himself, hobbies sports and so on. I make a note to chase him up for more.

Chapter Nine – Johnny Prestt I know Johnny (JP to many people) is a reputable property professional but I want the conversation to start on the subject of his adventures and travels. All the others so far have blocked my writing with their excess modesty. This man is a legend so surely, I can get some good honest boasting out of the man? We are sitting, just the two of us, in Piccolino in Liverpool yet again and the lovely Emma, the restaurant manager, has felt very sorry for us and has given us a coffee half an hour before she actually opens up. That’s on a busy day just before Christmas so a big thank you to her, and she deserves a mention. I have to confess that we have to meet up again at Starbucks a couple of weeks later because, as when I met with Barry Owen, the notes I took were just not substantial enough. The guy has so much to tell that you simply can’t take it all in. It also seems somehow inappropriate to scribble notes as we talk. He was also very happy to let me look at his photo albums which was an experience in itself. I felt like I was getting a one-to-one meeting with Thor Heyerdahl. One moment though, before I move away from Emma’s exemplary customer service, I would just ask what is wrong with people these days (and I will try and answer that myself in a minute). I went to try and have a business coffee recently with a pal in the delightful Oxton village and we couldn’t find one place that would serve us. There was one new establishment nearby and a young lady was in there milling around, but the sign on the door indicated that she didn’t have to open for ten more minutes. I have to ask if you turn the two of us away? I know I wouldn’t in her shoes, yet for some reason she did. It’s simple really. She knew we were standing there, and we knew she knew, but she did not desist from her mopping and did not give in and look up. I wasn’t going to stop staring in, hoping she would break. She didn’t. I finally began an elaborate and exaggerated waving act that she couldn’t not see but possibly might still ignore.

She came the few steps to the door, expressionless, and pointed at the back of the opening times sign on the door and returned immediately to her mopping. I didn’t even have time to try my sad St Bernard puppy dog look on her as that would almost certainly have got us in. The answer is obviously that this person doesn’t own the business, so she doesn’t care. Yet Emma cared, even though she didn’t own the business, and that is why employers need to look for Emmas and that is also why we went back for our office Christmas lunch to Piccolino the following week. To prove that customer service works. In business, you must never assume that employees will ever have the same passion you do about things but if they do you must make sure you look after them. I have a related tale and it involves my great pal Alistair Buckley (legendary water polo player for many years in the GB team and former 100m freestyle British record holder) who found himself in Germany one dark, wet, dreary evening with a bus load of thirsty and hungry water polo players. They came upon a country inn or whatever that might be called in Germany. He and one other from the group knocked on the stout wooden door hoping to find drink and sustenance. Does this sound like a carol? The bus was out of site around the back of the building at this stage. ‘Can we get a beer and some snacks please?’ Ali said as the door creaked opened. In typical British style, Alistair had asked the German gentleman in stilted English in an attempt at a German accent. ‘I am sorry, vee are closed’, he replied apparently mimicking Alistair in his own best version of ‘hallo hallo’ German. Alistair paused for a few seconds and decided to add more information in case he could talk the innkeeper around. He gave up on the slow talking English. ‘There’s 32 of us, and the rest are in a bus around the back’, A millisecond later the reply arrived in a surprisingly deadpan and unaltered tone: ‘In that case, vee are now open’. Now that’s how to run a business. If I owned that inn and 32 thirsty water polo lads were in a bus outside my premises, I would postpone my own wedding. (Sorry Alison).

Anyway, back to the tale and I am determined that I will start matters off with JP in a sort of ‘This is your life’ tone. ‘Johnny Prestt, round the world yachtsman, swashbuckler, Don Juan maybe?’. As I do this, he interrupts me to correct my pronunciation of the Spanish Lotharios name and I think to myself that maybe this means he has often been called it. I actually did know how to pronounce it but I didn’t want to sound pretentious. He, however, does it like a native Spanish speaker. He’s not multi-lingual as well, is he? From then on, he modestly tries to downplay everything I mention, again and again. They are all like twins in this book. ‘Oh, hold on now, I never sailed all the way around the world!’ he pleads. It appears to have all started sometime around the oil crisis in 1974 when he was working at Mason Owen. The crisis had meant that a big client of theirs, Telegraph Properties, was having a hard time. JP hadn’t been with Mason Owen that long and he feared he might be one of the first ones that would be shown the door. They call that ‘Last In First Out’ or LIFO. With this scenario facing him, JP jumped ship before he was pushed. He had also been to see some friends in the Canaries and had thought how much fun they were having messing about on boats and he realised he really should try some of that! I don’t blame him. I apologise here, and I know I’m beginning to sound like a very large version of the late great Ronnie Corbett but the LIFO thing reminds me of a story which I now share with Johnny and which will interest many accountants reading. There should be quite a few, as they don’t have any hobbies. Back again when I was auditing with Ernst & Young I was sent to one of their larger clients, the famous Cammell Lairds’ shipbuilders and repairers. As part of our studies, we had learnt that clients could value the stocks they held by using various methods. They might assume that the more recent items they bought were sold first (last in first out-LIFO), a bit like JP above. Imagine if you bought apples and put them in a barrel, you would have to take the ones you bought the most recently out first. There was also FIFO or First in First Out and this might be used if you had a massive tank and the tap to it was at the bottom. Still with me? I bet the accountants are all probably getting quite excited at this stage.

Anyway, that’s enough free accountancy tuition, but there were other methods too and I found myself armed with probably only that smattering of knowledge when I knocked on the Managing Director’s door to ask how he valued bolts or something or other. ‘Oh Jeez, an accountant, one up in the food chain from a bloody solicitor’ he greeted me with. He clearly liked me, and everything I was doing to add joy to his day. ‘Bloody solicitors are top’, he continued… ‘the scum of the earth. And accountants! Leaches, all of them. “What the hell do you want anyway I’m really busy’. (He didn’t actually say ‘really, he used another word). ‘I do apologise’ I bleated, ‘but it is my task to find out your stock valuation methods for several different types of stock that you have………’ He interrupted me in mid-sentence: ‘FOFO’ I was totally flummoxed. I hadn’t heard of this one and I wished instantly that I had finished the chapter on stock valuation methods the night before instead of popping to the rugby club. ‘Er…..I’m not familiar with………’ ‘Fuck Off and Find Out’, he again interrupted. Charming. Sorry Mum, for the language, but that’s what he said. And sorry dear readers, as my Editor has removed most of the bad language, but even he agreed that we needed to keep that in (technical accounting jargon, he said), or the story wouldn’t have worked. And, so back to JP. He started taking some sailing lessons from Milo Parry who was a Navy officer for Blue Funnel. Back in those days it was all the basics, as there were no electronics, depth sounders, fish finders, GPS and all the modern-day gismos. You were taught how to navigate a boat from first principles using a sextant, the stars, the sun and so on. The depth finder was a lump of lead on the end of a piece of string.

They acquired a 34-foot sloop called the Viatic which came from Pwllheli and they set off from Abersoch towards Gibraltar. In Gibraltar they experienced some bad weather which brought them very close to meeting their maker. However, they managed to land there safely. It’s all coming thick and fast now, and they are next in Tangiers where they meet Mario, a famous eccentric architect who had a piano on board his own boat just to prove his eccentricity. They sailed through the Canaries, the Caribbean and on to the east coast of the Americas. Just look at him (the one with the beard):

Wrestling a giant lobster After the stint on the Viatic he went to the Mediterranean where he started a charter business delivering yachts for rich clients. He was a party to what was the first ever flotilla in that region. You nautical chaps will know what that means, I haven’t a clue! After that it was back to civilisation for a short period of time. He ventures to ask Barry Owen if he could go to the office party back at Mason Owen and there, he met Julia who is from the Watson Prickard family, the gentlemen’s retailers that used to be on the corner of North John and Victoria Street in Liverpool. When he mentions that store it takes me back decades! The two of them jumped on board Smuggler and spent two years on that and travelled around the Mediterranean, the Canaries and the Caribbean before getting married back on dry land. What would Julia’s parents have thought, with their

Johnny, Archie and Julia daughter off on a boat with a mad pirate who wrestles giant lobsters! Actually, JP isn’t a massive man so that might be just an average lobster. I did relay to JP that is certainly one way to find out if you get on with someone: spend two years on a boat with them. I had done something not half as daring as that after I met Alison (my wife of a zillion years) when we spent six weeks in a six-berth camper van with seven people. Does that mean I could actually have married any of the people in that bus on that basis that we all got on? No, surely that’s not how it works is it. But we managed to get on very well. Can’t say I see much of the others these days so maybe I was a pain. I can’t tell but probably. Anyway, when JP arrived back on dry land a bit more permanently, he was on £3k per annum and that was in 1978. It was a wonder he knew what to do with all the money as he had been on £12 a week in 1972. What about the salty sea dog beard, when did that appear? He still has it, now styled in a different shade. Well, he told me that he has had that since 1972 but has paused to have a shave twice since then; both times for charity. Nowadays he sports it cropped or designer stubble as they now call it and its bright white and very distinguished. JP has been on some adventures with Malcolm Walker, partly due to his sailing skills, and partly as once again, these fine fellows just so much enjoy each other’s company.

Malcolm commissioned the build of an Oyster 70 which he christened No Rehearsal. He had never sailed before, so quite an apt name and they set off across the Atlantic in 1998. They are both still here to tell the tale so they succeeded but that must have been quite an adventure. In some ways, emphasise that word ‘some’ -adventurers get it easy these days. I have been reading about the extraordinary, some might say possibly lunatic, adventurers from the 60s and 70s who set off on what now seem crazy trips and had what would be termed these days as ‘zero back up’. In the yacht races of that era in particular, the loved ones left behind would have no idea where their hero was at all. He or she might report in once a week maybe sending telegrams or using dodgy radios or making contact when they were on land for repairs or food. Sometimes they could get word home after meeting up with a bigger boat and often meeting a bigger boat could also be a possible disaster for the smaller craft. One incident took place in a round the world yacht race in the sixties. One of the sailors called Donald Crowhurst was in financial difficulties when he set sail and he immediately struggled as the boat was very new to him. The event was a massive and very novel thing in those days, was reported all over the papers and the news and Donald had sponsors that were relying on him to get them some decent publicity in return for their investment in his business and in this sailing venture. There is a lot of speculation about what actually happened, but it is generally agreed that he was able to falsify his logs and give the impression that he was still in the race for months on end, actually leading it at times, when in fact he was hanging around in the ocean somewhere and was going to try and take a ‘short cut’. The investors needed to see some return on their investment, and he must have felt his family wanted a hero, so he must have thought they were getting that and when he took that short cut no one would be any the wiser. He probably meant to put things right when his deceit initially started but it must have eventually become clear to him that his plan wasn’t going to work and, in a poor state of mind, it is believed he stepped off the back of the boat to take his own life. He must have been in a very bad way psychologically at that stage. This was such an amazing tale and it has been made into a film with Colin Firth starring as Crowhurst (2017: The Mercy). The winner (and only one to finish I believe) was Robin Knox-Johnston and I recall that he gave his winnings to Crowhurst’s widow, which was a magnanimous gesture typical of the chivalry of that period.

They were made of stern stuff back in those days. I think one French competitor decided to sail off into the distance and not return, instead deciding to settle somewhere like Tahiti for the rest of his days. Knox-Johnson also rowed the Atlantic with John Ridgeway. I remember seeing a photo of another one of that breed, John Fairfax, sewing a large wound up on his arm after he had jumped into the sea to attack a shark that kept bumping into his boat and ‘annoying him’. I am telling you all this because this is pretty much how I see JP, doing this sort of stuff and that photo before convinces me I am right. When you set sail it was literally you against the elements, real adventure. Get it wrong and it could be the end. I get the impression that if you challenge JP to any form of physical contest then you are looking at best at second place, though I’d like to see who would win between him and the girl serving the Bloody Marys back at Brigands. He’d also been a gymnast. From 1966 to 69 he was in the British gymnastics team under coach Nick Stuart who was a friend of Queen Elizabeth.

JP showing his gymnastic skills.

He went to Kingsmead school where he continued his gymnastics and then the family picked Wrekin College for their son for his further education because of the strong links with that sport. Dad was a doctor and Mum was a radiotherapist and JP was brought up in Oxton then Bebington, both of which are on the Wirral. After school he went to the College of Building where he got a Diploma in Estate Management. He still sails today. I didn’t get around to ask him how old he is, though he has kids ranging from 26 to 34. He also shoots, shotgun and target, has played rugby, has swum competitively and was a good sprinter especially over his preferred distance of 220 yards. As well as that, in the school CCF, he was a Non-Commissioned Officer.

That has to be enough. Bloody hell, this guy had Duracell batteries before they were invented. I steer him towards work. He spent almost his entire adult career working for Mason Owen and looking for lease and freehold properties for Iceland and other clients. He has long lasting friendships with Malcolm and most of the others and is without doubt the definitive property guru I mentioned at the start. JP has retired now and still does the main sports that I mentioned before. Did I forget to mention that he used to scuba-dive and once speared sharks for sport. Hold on - has he made all this up and he was actually head librarian at Bebington Library? By the way, his dog Archie deserves a chapter of his own. So, that interview was exhausting, but hugely rewarding and it turns out that JP has missed loads out. He was the President of the Artists Club in 1993. I am sorry that I missed that year as I think I joined in 1995. Nowadays he does a lot for the Wirral Hospice of St Johns at Clatterbridge. Lastly, hats off to Julia, for chasing this Jack Russell of a man around the globe patiently for all those mad years. I bet you have some tales to tell as well. I bet you once said “I am sure Its left here Johnny2 and you gave in and turned right only to end up in the wrong part of the world.

Chapter Ten Ray Bailey

I think it was my grandmother or an aunt that said to me when I was a youngster that you should ‘never a borrower or a lender be’. How right was she and how even more magnificently happy would I be today if I had followed that advice. Yet, I’m still mega happy because I generally don’t look backwards but I would now be comfortably off. It’s her fault for telling me when I was too young to take it in and as we all know males don’t mature until they are well into their mid-50s and some much later than that (see chapters 1 to 14). I mention this at the start of this particular chapter (which loosely centres on Ray Bailey and I know you know what I mean by now) because one evening during a dinner table conversation in Oswestry he added something very valuable to my elderly relatives’ sentiments. We were talking at that dinner about the people throughout your life that take advantage of you, almost always involving the borrowing of money from you in the process. As I mentioned, it has happened to me a lot and I think I was whinging about the latest sagas going on in my stupidly hectic existence. Ray interjected at this point, politely but very firmly shouting the whole table down as he spoke to tell us that it’s not the money that is important: ‘It…… is……. not…… the……. money’. He laboured. “The money is largely irrelevant, you’ll make that back”, he mused as we quietened down to listen. “What these people take away from you is something else.”, he said, while waving his arms in the air. ”Do you know what it is?” No one wanted to hazard a guess in case they got it completely wrong.

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“It’s your TIME boys.” ‘YOUR TIME’. “These people……these bastards…… (I sensed I wasn’t alone here) take your TIME away from you.” I went off into a little bit of a reverie at this point to think about all the people that have done this to me and it dawned on me that he was absolutely right. I had literally wasted actual years of my life chasing ‘people’ that are happy to look you in the eye and lie to you and I believe they enjoy it. No one had actually spelt it out like this before and as I realised how right he was, I was actually a little sad at that point in the evening. They had taken a big chunk of my life off me and while it was taking up my thoughts and my time, it wasn’t bothering them one jot. They are not my type of person, but I constantly seem to get tied up with them. I guess they spot me, and they use me. What a mug. Sorry, this is supposed to be a fun book but if I owe anyone money or even something things like a bike or a drill or whatever, it prays on my mind. If it was money, I would prioritise its repayment over pretty much everything else. Some of the people I have encountered have a totally reverse attitude to that. I had written a big piece about just one of those examples, but I took it out in the end. They would probably bring some lawsuit and get damages, as that seems to be the way things work out these days. Anyway, it was only one example so why should I only mention one. I have the seed of a plan to link them all up in a WhatsApp group one day suggesting they all get together and set up something together, some massive scam, as they could do really well. So, keep away from them, trust your instinct and never deal with people you don’t trust, or they will take your life off you. They will definitely look you in the face and lie to you and if you’re not them, it’s all the harder for you to imagine at the time that that is what they might be doing! They definitely get some sort of perverse pleasure from it.

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That’s better. Got that partly off my chest but I wish I could write it all down and name names. Perhaps that’s my fourth book, when I’m rich and even more famous, and I can defend and win those libel cases. Let’s just hope the people that have done this to me, read this book and recognise themselves even though they are not being named. When they ring me up bleating their defence yet again to me, I will get the satisfaction that they also paid for a copy of the book, so I have at least got a few pennies back for the charity to have benefitted from anyway! Actually they probably nicked it: just like the ‘mates’ that stole my signed copy of John Timpson‘s autobiography. I hope their bookshelves collapse. Sorry, I’m really on my soap box now. Did I say earlier that I don’t look backwards? Well maybe I was wrong, and I am harbouring some demons. These things must be bugging me. Anyway, we started this chapter talking about Ray Bailey. When the above encounter about the world’s business and life vermin took place we were at the Wynnstay Hotel in Oswestry and there’s more about that in chapter 11 on the Woodwards, but now I am meeting Ray at Andy Ps house in Knutsford. We are off to Manchester Airport to jump on a flight to Iceland! We are so bloody lucky. What am I expecting in my first decent face to face meeting with Ray? Well, I know he dominates get togethers with his stories and his wit, and I know he calls everyone ‘Love’ which is quite endearing for a man in his seventies but the most remarkable thing about him is that he actually knows everything. He is a walking talking Wikipedia. Ali found him overpowering when she first met him as she thought she knew everything. Fishing, shooting, horses, football…his brain must simply be a sponge for everything he has ever come across. I love listening to him, I’m not jealous and it’s not boring. You might recall though that I am a ‘buffoon’.

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I had been trying to devise a way of getting to meet up with Ray but he lives quite a long way away, his social calendar is manic and I too am very busy with work. Months fly by and then this opportunity looms. Another fishing trip to the Grimsa river in Iceland and because of the ‘Big Fish’ I am obliged to go. Right, I hear you say, what’s the BIG FISH? I didn’t want to talk about it but as you bought it up…. It’s because of Andy Pritchard again that this happened. It was exactly one year earlier, and Andy P is dragging me on my first ever fishing trip to Iceland (the country, not the store). Many fishermen reading this will ask why I had to be dragged to such a famous fishing place but at the time I actually didn’t want to go. Sorry Andy, I did say but you weren’t listening! I was chuffing busy at work, I’m not a fisherman as such (having last cast a fly about 46 years before that) and I miss the kids when I go away. I was also very nervous of making a total fool of myself on the river. If you met my kids you would wonder how on earth I could miss them but somehow you get attached, it is really weird. The conversation that previous year went: Andy P: ‘you and I are going fishing.’ ‘Not me Andy, I haven’t done it for years, wouldn’t have a clue’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you a coach, a Ghillie’. ‘I’ve got no equipment at all mate.’ ‘I’ve rented it’ ‘My feet are huge and I’ve no waders’. ‘They are lending you some size 13s, Sasquatch’. ‘I just can’t Andy, I’m really busy’. ‘You’ve got to, I’ve booked it, I had a copy of your passport from the last trip away.’

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So, I thought I had good reasons not to go and I thought I had put them well, but I was persuaded out of all of them by the world’s most singularly persuasive man. Another ‘once is a lifetime’ opportunity. Although I am so very glad that I went in many, many ways, I do have one big regret and that is that I caught The Big Fish. I know I really shouldn’t regret that, but I was surrounded by men who had striven all their lives to do what I had just done and unfortunately I had done it almost by bloody accident. It became a great talking point as you would expect, but I so genuinely wish that Andy himself or even one of the other lifelong fishing devotees on that trip had had the experience that I had that day. It would have lasted them a lifetime, as indeed it will me, but for slightly different reasons. Maybe Jim Davies or Ray Bailey should have caught it. Any of the guys that went, to be honest, except that ruffian John Powell of course but then he shouldn’t have been on such a refined and sophisticated fishing trip in the first place. So, I caught the fish of their dreams. Ironically it had occurred to me before we went that this might happen, but I had dismissed my obscure thoughts as just nervous flights of fancy. As a brief aside and to sum up the fishing type, I have a good example of what such a fish as mine might mean to a real fisherman. I have a pal that used to work with me in Dolgellau. He’s a head teacher in a school for young people with serious behavioural problems and autistic spectrum disorders. He’s not only the head teacher but also an academic who has had his writings published about his field of work. However, he spends an inordinate amount of his waking time thinking about fish. You’re stood in a river now Duncan aren’t you! A good weekend away for him is heading off somewhere remote and inhospitable with a few lads and sitting by or in water for hours on end and in all weathers waiting to catch a fish. Actually, I’m not sure whether catching one even matters a lot of the time. The catching of the fish might even be a side issue. After those many hours, and quite often with no success, they head back to a damp hut, eat ready meals washed down with a few tins of warm beer, sleep a little bit in soggy sleeping bags only to

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get up early the following morning to do the whole thing again in all the same clothes. That is his idea of heaven. It’s extraordinary that this normally OCD man can endure such conditions, but he actually revels in it. So one night I sent him the one photo I have of the big fish, on the night I caught it.

The Big Fish with his BIG FISH Yup that’s a big fish. It’s not the type of photo I usually send but the fish I am holding is game changing. It’s 20lb in weight, is nearly a metre long and its genus is sea trout. It would be big for a salmon, I’m told. When Duncan’s phone pinged to indicate there was a message it probably made him jump. The signal isn’t too hot in the hills above Rhydymain anyway and, to be fair, he doesn’t get that many texts, as most of his pals are being tucked up in bed with this month’s Trout & Salmon magazine stuck on their beardy weatherbeaten faces. At the time, by an extraordinary coincidence, he was reading one of the books he had piled up on the arm of his chair next to him on that very subject: Sea Trout and all the exciting aspects of them. He had been endeavouring for months to try

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and catch one of the wee beasties in the Mawddach estuary and it was on his mind constantly. Up comes that picture on his phone. Someone he hasn’t seen for ages and someone he had never once heard mention fishing ever, holding a truly enormous sea trout. Confused and angry, he must have uttered a raft of expletives. His girlfriend may have rushed in from the kitchen, Welsh cakes in hand, to see if her prayers had been answered and he was to be found sitting in the chair clutching his chest and reaching up towards that great salmon river in the sky. But no, when she got in the room, he was already by the lounge window peering out. ‘What’s up?’ she quizzed. ‘I think Wainwright is in our garden!’ ‘Why on earth would you think that, as he lives miles away and its 9.30 at night!’ ‘Because I think he has been looking in through our window and has seen what I am reading and is playing some cruel practical photo shopped joke on me, that’s for why!’ He spoke as if this should make some sense to her, but it obviously wouldn’t. After probably searching the garden, he texted me back and we later laughed at what had unfolded. I could still hear the ill feeling in his voice though. A tone I was going to get very familiar with. When I caught the fish my Norwegian ghillie was amazing. I have to tell you he also said that I was too. I followed every single instruction he gave me to the letter for 40 minutes. Once the fish was in the net he was ecstatic and it was only then that I realised that this was a big one. It was so big that my great pals Trevor Reece and the aforementioned John Powell, who had watched the whole thing unfold, felt I shouldn’t tell Andy P until the evening when he had had a shower and was relaxed with a drink in his hand. Tell him at any other time and I might ruin his holiday. Bloody hell, I didn’t realise the ramifications of catching this oversized bloody trout. I agreed but when we broke for lunch, Andy immediately came up to me to show me a photo of him with a sea trout of about 8 pounds.

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‘Cute’ I said. ‘What!’, he exclaimed ‘Cute?’ ‘Sorry, no,’ I stammered, ‘it’s great, what is it?’ At this point I can see in my peripheral vision, that Trevor and John like two enormous schoolboys are furiously jumping up and down and gesticulating that I should tell him my story now instead of waiting, and they are suggesting a big change of plan. Oh lord, I thought, and with butterflies but without pause I produce my picture. ‘Is it like this one?’ I enquired offering the phone to him. He took it off me. ‘What the f*** is that?’, he gasped. ‘Well, I believe it’s the same species as your one, but I guess mine has been going to the gym a lot more.’ He didn’t see the funny side of that wise crack and continued his questioning to try and explain away what he thought he saw in this photo. ‘Have you photo-shopped this?’ ‘I don’t know how to photo-shop things….no, I caught it’ At this point Andy looked around the room for help and immediate saw the two excitable school kids Trevor and John. The truth dawned on him. ‘For f**** sake, why you?’ he muttered. Good question, I thought. Anyway, here we are again a year later and off on another Iceland trip. I haven’t even argued about going this time as I have been summoned to show that it was all a fluke! Unlike last year, no private jet from Manchester. There will be queues, exhausting security checks and all the normal things that come with normal flying. No glass of bubbly this time but we are soon installed on the plane on our way to the magical land of Iceland, comparing fishing stories, of which I now have, er, one. Here’s a photo taken in Reykjavik on that second trip.

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The author with his Magnificent 7 This trip had a fine bunch of gentlemen gathered together. Some of them you have already encountered in their own chapters whilst some others will cameo here. As well as Ray second in from the left we have from the left: Nigel Weatherill on Ray’s left Ray Bailey (this chapter) himself Andy P (chapter 6) Mark Stuart John Taylor Jim Davies (chapter 8) Me, nice red trousers, the mustard ones were in the wash. Mark Bowie Fascinating bunch. For a start, I can’t believe I haven’t met John Taylor before. Another rugby man (rugby league but you know he’s still OK) and he’s been in property and also in many scrapes for all his life. His face bears testament to that.

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He can’t believe we haven’t met either and at the end of the four days he texts me: ‘Jim Davies had warned me about you, but you were actually worse than even he had said’. Someone else likes me. I’ll introduce you to the characters as we go along but we set off from Manchester airport on a Friday morning. As I said, in the past Andy P had rented a charter jet but even he felt it was too expensive this time. I couldn’t afford the napkins on a private jet, to be honest, but this time we were using Iceland Air and it was really fine. Actually, it was propellers so I found it really exciting, like going back in time in some ways. Once in Reykjavik we were staying at the Hotel Borg for one night and I hoped that the guys, mostly a little older than me on average, would head straight to their rooms for a nap before we went for a meal later on. Wrong. Jim Davies barked the orders around in the Hotel Foyer. As he is trifle deaf this was readily audible throughout most of the capital and maybe beyond. ‘Bags dropped in room and back down in reception in ten minutes sharp, chaps.’ I almost expected him to finish with ‘synchronise watches.’ There goes my little trip to the gym and the spa I thought. We went straight out to the bar next to the hotel and had a few beers (three). At the point where it was only three hours until our table was booked at a restaurant and we might as well have stayed on the beers, most of the party then agreed that they were ‘starving’. Really? Starving? It was a strange use of such a word here. Had we been deprived of food for a week, I don’t think many of us would have got close to the BMI targets our medical advisors would recommend. Copious burgers and so on were ordered. I was able to avoid this and when the group had finished their ‘snack’ they decided, just when I fancied more beers, to retire for some ’shuteye’ before the main event of the evening (another meal!). Hence, I was able after all to set off to the gym where I did some chest and triceps exercises accompanied by some pretty impressive belching.

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I hasten to add that there was no one else there. We had a lovely meal that night and the following morning after a huge breakfast (still ‘starving’ I guess!) we were in a minibus heading from Reykjavik towards the amazing Grimsa river. I thought appetites were meant to diminish as you get older but there was very little evidence of that in this group. The only one to show anything close to restraint so far was Mark Stuart, the biggest of the group. At 6 foot three and about 200 pound he is not in bad shape at all for 65 years old. He seems to have made money in property and other ventures and every year runs shooting parties over in Portugal. As a result of which he is a very deep dark brown and ready to step onto the set of an ‘It aint half hot mum’ remake at the drop of a hat. His mate Mark Bowie is also a very pleasant chap. Very quiet, polite and understated. When Jim and Ray are in full flight, he observes. We all do to be fair, but if he could get a word in, it would no doubt be funny. There isn’t much of a chance, so he enjoys the role of listener instead. He’s got few bob too but I’m too refined to ask him his life story, unless he offers the information. John Taylor is as hinted at before: bonkers: I don’t believe there’s a better word in this case. The tales of his medical history are simply unbelievable, and he is very lucky indeed to still be on the planet. As a result, he is now permanently in a hurry and no moment of fun can be missed. I can see that there are some late nights looming. Throughout the three days Ray Bailey pretty much holds court. He has a tale and an anecdote for everything. His memory is bottomless. As I listen myself, silent and transfixed, I wonder if they were to arrange a talk-off between him and Jim Davies, who would win? It would make great TV. The only other person who touches those two as a raconteur is Richard Kirk who I met while at Iceland and who at one time owned Peacocks after he moved on. He can tell a mean shaggy dog story, and in our last chapter we glean a small flavour of that! Anyway, at this stage I need to apologise yet again to any readers for all this endless wandering off course. That massive trout was talked about a lot on this second trip and as the days went by and as I didn’t catch a single fish, I could see the group relaxing and I could almost feel their communal contentment growing. I remembered what Ray had said to me the year before. His words were: ‘Well done you really deserve it’ but his tone said something quite opposite to that.

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Wainwright was getting his come-uppence. Last year was a flash in the pan. Brilliant. To be honest I was glad too. I also had finally proved to myself that not catching a fish doesn’t diminish the enjoyment of fishing as much as you might think, and I was very happy just getting better at the techniques on a daily basis. The surroundings no doubt helped, of course. It must be a lovely moment for anyone in the fishing business when they realise that their clients are not going to be all that miffed if there’s been no fish caught. The clients either blame their own technique or the weather or the temperature and the host seldom gets targeted. That must be a relief as you would want your customers to catch fish to an extent. It is a truly amazing sport. Time does not drag, and you think about nothing but your fly (technical term), the direction of the wind, the riverbanks, the trees…. indeed, all the many things to do with the task in hand but NOT your work or your worries. As a result, I have concluded that it must be very good for you indeed. Why is it that if asked to follow the wife or partner around shops, a typical male will feel he weighs a tonne within literally minutes. You just have to sit down, the immediate and draining exhaustion is debilitating. However, I stood in or near that free-flowing icy cold river for three days and never, not once, did I feel the urge to sit down and all that after carousing until the small hours with Taylor and all. Had I been in Debenhams or the like, I would have been looking everywhere desperately for a chair or just anything to sit on or lean against. When you see the shoe department at times like that your heart quickens with excitement as you know there surely must be seats! While fishing I never felt weary and yet the night we had had before each day should have put us in an all-day coma. Yes, it is an extraordinary sport and it was a unique trip. Sadly, however, I don’t have the time for fishing…not YET anyway. On the other hand, if I ever get to retire and am healthy enough, it will surely get my attention. I’ve done it again, got distracted from the subject matter. I know for a fact that Ray won’t mind because I am talking about fishing and when he talks he also goes around the houses for hours on end. So, what has Ray Bailey done all his life?

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I finally have a good excuse to give him a call. Shrewsbury Town have held Liverpool FC to a draw in the FA Cup at home and Ray was chairman of Shrewsbury from 1992 to 1996. We need to talk. Did you go Ray? “Oh yes indeed, what a marvellous occasion and I will be going to Liverpool for the replay this time.” I’ve arranged to meet him at the Costa inside the Grosvenor shopping centre in Chester. I’m pretty hot and bothered by the time I get there as it’s a lot further on foot from the train station than I thought. He tells me I am looking very trim, have I lost weight? That’s very nice of him. He also immediately tells me about the Macallan distillery roof that he and his son Stuart have just provided the substrate for the extraordinary roof there. Now it is amazing and its actually so good I’ve included a photo of it but he’s told me about it quite a few times now and I think to myself Is he actually showing signs of aging finally? No chance. This is the only indication in the next hour and a half that he is apparently 77.

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Here’s that roof – amazing! I am repeating myself all the time and I’m, er, much younger. He’s in great nick. And so, for every other moment of that meeting he demonstrates that he is still as sharp as a knife and, as he himself says, he can remember very clearly right back to when he was two. This is extraordinary and pretty unique in my experience. Ray is the youngest of 11 children. By the time he was six he had got involved in the passion of his life: fishing. He had brothers Terry and Bob that were still around the family home and their Dad used to take them by bike to the river Roden near Wem. The bike had a stirrup seat on the front where Ray sat and Terry would run behind them for the 4 miles. By this stage Rob was not so interested in fishing any more. Ray recalls going to Hawkstone Lake just near the golf club. When he looked across that lake and saw people playing golf his father told him: ‘You don’t go over there, Ray, that’s for the gentlemen’. That seems such a comment from a bygone era but then Ray’s Dad was born in 1900 still in Victoria’s reign and things were very different back then. In fact, Ray actually became one of those gentlemen and eventually had golf lessons with Alex Lyle (Sandy Lyle’s dad). At his best he played off an impressive

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four handicap and, in those lessons, Alex Lyle’s broad Scottish accent meant that he would finish up many of his sentences by asking the young Ray if he understood. ‘Junderstand?’ He would say that as one word. This stuck with Ray all his life until one day he called one of his racehorses by that same name. When it came to the question of how much the lesson was, it was not cash but a brace of sea trout for Alex’s wife Agnes. Back in those days the family lived in a three-bed semi-detached council house with an outside toilet, not one at the end of the garden but one outside of the house but attached. Here we pause for a joke about the well to do lady from the city that visits relatives in the countryside. When she requires the toilet she is directed to the exterior of the building but then storms back into the house indignant to tell the family that there is no lock on the door. The man of the house puts her right: ‘Don’t worry luv, we haven’t had a bucket pinched yet’. Talking about his beginnings, it is clear that Ray has worked very hard all his life ever since he was a very young boy. The area of Shropshire where he lives has always been famous for sweet peas. I didn’t know you can grow them on the floor as he tells me now, I thought they had to be ‘trained’ up sticks. The famous name in the region for sweet peas is Eckfords of Tilly and Ray used to deliver groceries on a bicycle for them a bit like Granville in Open all Hours. He probably covered a lot more miles than the made-up character Granville. From the age of 10 to 13, Ray worked every hour conceivable, six days a week for the princely sum of seven shillings and sixpence. When he wasn’t delivering, he sometimes worked in the shop and he recalls one of his jobs was grinding the coffee. He was always amazed when the owner would take the ground coffee that Ray had completed and place it centrally on a square of paper. He would then fold it into a package in such a way that the name of the business always came out neatly on the top of the finished item when all the folding was finished.

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Years later when Ray had been fishing the Sprouston beat on the Tweed, and he noticed a huge banner right by the church. When he asked what the story was behind the bunch of sweet peas competition with the enormous prize of £1,000, he was informed that it was begun many years back. Then the person pointed out Ray’s car number plate WEM 1 and knowledgably informed him that Shropshire was a great place for the sweet pea. Ray said he knew that -, he used to deliver them! I know now that Ray is also a great shot and when requested he coaches many folks in the art of shooting with a shotgun. When did he get into that? Well not early in life as it was the richer man’s sport, but he remembers fondly Les Edwards who kindly let him use a 12 bore to shoot the scavenging pigeons on the allotment. His Dad had two plots there which isn’t surprising with eleven kids. Ray shot for England from 1982 to 1986 in the four-man team. Suddenly, Ray remembers another tale related to those outside loos, it was about their neighbour who had terrible piles (haemorrhoids). His father Arthur could talk to this guy when they were both on the toilet as there was only a single skin of bricks between the two back-to-back conveniences. The poor chap made a pained noise as he sat there. Ray also knew some other chap with the same affliction whose doctor had told him that if all else fails take the remains of the tea leaves from the teapot and spread them all over the affected area. When he went back the doctor, he asked if they looked any better. ‘Not really’ said the doctor ‘but you are going to meet a tall dark stranger and go on a very long journey’. Ray recalls his son asking him a question about his homework. I know immediately that this is not a true story. ‘Dad’ he asked ‘What’s the difference between theory and reality. Ray thought for a while and then told his son to go upstairs and ask his mum if she’d sleep with the next-door neighbour for a million quid. This his son did and came back down with a simple ‘yes’. ‘Now go and ask your sister the same question’ Ray suggested. The boy came back with another ‘yes’. Ray was hence able to explain to his boy the difference between theory and reality.

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‘In theory son’ he said, ‘we are sitting on a couple of million quid but in reality, we are probably living with a couple of slappers’. Do you know, I would pay good money and travel quite far to see a Ray Bailey one man show, with him sitting in an armchair rambling on like Ronnie Corbett. Early in his career Ray landed an interview at the vets. He is also still selling corn as well. He was interviewed by Bill Minton, the father of David Minton. Bill was a very fine blood stock agent and has ridden in the Queen’s carriage at major horse racing events. Within two years of working at that job Ray was poached by the MD of the petroleum division, Bert Hughes. Petrol was 1 shilling and ten pence a gallon back then. Anyway, there he was, area sales manager at 26. Then some corporate shenanigans kicked off and Bates & Hunt were taken over by RHM who then were bought out by Dalgety. I’ll be testing you lot on all this later. And at the age of 33 Ray became Managing Director of that division and eventually they sold that business to him. At the time he borrowed £3.8 million to enable him to carry out that buyout. We digress for a short time into how deals were done back then, on a handshake and so on. We agree, like most of the protagonists in this book, that those days are well and truly over and that honesty is out of the window. (Malcolm Walker wasn’t sure though was he, but I feel we were talking about something slightly different there.) We don’t talk about that for too long because we soon move on to football and to Shrewsbury Town again. Ray became chairman of the club between 1992 and 1996 back in the days where there were about 4,000 spectators at every home game. During his tenure of that role they made a trip to Wembley for the first time in their history and got into the second division after, obviously, winning the third. While away at Barnsley with Shrewsbury town he met now lifelong friend Jack Charlton. Yes, that one, England star of the 1966 World Cup. As they were sitting next to each other they started talking about fishing. When Jack mentioned that he hadn’t yet caught a sea trout, Ray told him that he had had a great offer to fish on the Eachieg and would Jack like to come along. Like most of us, Ray often gave his number to people but very few followed it up the following day. You’ve done it yourself, and you don’t like to ring do you?

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Jack did ring, however. As their friendship flourished and they travelled and fished, they saw some new houses being built near the Ridgepool there in Ireland. It was called Moy Heights and Ray suggested that they should get one between them. The next day Jack’s wife Pat rang Ray up and asked him what this was about a house and hence they subsequently cracked on and bought it. It’s been the best investment they ever made, and they often go there. I probably should have mentioned this earlier on in the chapter, but while talking to Ray in Chester it became clear very quickly that he should write his own book. He admitted that quite a few people have suggested that and he is considering it. So, as a result, I have only recorded a small handful of the stories he regaled me with that afternoon, otherwise I would spoil the real thing when he writes it. I have offered to help get him started. I plan to send him a draft structure to put all his life into to get his book started. ‘Now that would be a book,’ he said. I really want to record so many of the tales that Ray tells me, but I would feel guilty. There are so many tales from his travels with Jack, many of which came about just when and just after he became Republic of Ireland coach. He got them into their first World Cup in 1990. The man became a national hero. In 1996, he was awarded honorary Irish citizenship. The honour amounts to full Irish citizenship, and it is the highest honour the Irish state gives out and it does so very rarely indeed. The tales all have one common theme, that Jack takes the time to sign every autograph and is a thoroughly decent man. I would have loved to have met him. Ray, its been a blast. I will get a draft knocked out soon of your book and we will have another coffee. Footnote: Jack Charlton sadly passed away on the 10th July 2020. Months later, when I am talking to Ray to sort out some of my spelling mistakes, he muses on what a great book he has in his memory about the great man.

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Chapter Eleven Nigel and Jeremy Woodward

We mentioned the Woodwards in chapter 10 on Ray Bailey (and also in Malcolm’s chapter). We had had that magnificent dinner and stay over at Nigel’s’ amazing hotel in Oswestry. Nigel and the Woodwards were of course a big part in the early Iceland story, and this evening had been the third or fourth in a series of annual nights out where we treat Andy Pritchard because he in turn treats us all so well and takes us out all the time: Greece, Iceland, Madrid, Barcelona….. but not Bangor, I paid for that. Bangor! I don’t want to harp on, but do you know I paid for the lot and he still hasn’t paid his half back for that, that’s £21.50. The labels alone on his wine bottles are worth more than that. Anyway, I want to pause here and introduce you to a cameo guest: Peter Chantler. I only met him once and that was at a pheasant shoot at Bryngwyn Hall, the country house of the fabulous Lady Auriol, Marchioness of Lynlithgow. That sounds rather well to do doesn’t it but then I do move in high circles, you know. On first meeting I didn’t have any initial thoughts that Peter might be particularly old at all. He seemed 70s maybe and his wife/girlfriend maybe quite a bit younger. Nothing unusual there these days: the younger second/third wife. Can’t wait to meet mine – (ouch – you know what and who that was!). I was chatting away to him and a few others in the group over a mixture of champagne/sloe gin and amazing homemade sausage rolls. Initially he was talking to just me about his businesses, and as far as I could gather, he had had a farm and then diversified into three separate businesses and those had each been handed over to his three sons.

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When given this chance, all the sons had apparently done very well with the challenge they had. When he mentioned the past though, he would say stuff like Henry (can’t remember the names sorry) took over the dairy in 63, James the cheese making in 65 and so on…. I had to butt in here in slight amazement/confusion as I had done some rapid mental arithmetic and said (maybe possibly rudely): ‘Bloody hell Peter, you must be 90!’ Unphased he replied immediately: ‘No, No, No…… er……well, not until next Wednesday anyway.’ The chat had by now become a group chat (in the old sense not todays nonsense) and he told us what was probably his signature tale. He believed that he had actually been at one stage the oldest man ever to hold a helicopter licence when he finally handed it in to the authorities at the ripe old age of 83. I suspected the punchline was on its way so I asked him exactly why he decided to hand in his licence rather than to wait until someone, presumably the same authorities he had handed it to, took it off him. “Well,”, he began immediately, “when you're driving or flying a helicopter you really need to be able to do at least three things simultaneously and I decided at that point in my life that…… “ Wait for it … “… I couldn't even do one!” This was met with deserved rapturous laughter and spontaneous applause. Maybe some of the party had heard it before (his wife definitely had) but they all enjoyed it second time or third time. It also emerged shortly after that his wife was now one of the oldest licensed helicopter pilots in the UK herself and I think that was at the ripe old age of 67 at the time. Peter was a very witty and very engaging man and a large circle formed around him as he regaled us with tales from his enormous life. Just after the drinks and homemade fayre had come to an end, we were walking back towards the next shoot area. While I was looking for where I had been told to go and stand, I realised that I really should've found a bit of undergrowth in which to have a wee.

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As comes with age, I was desperate immediately and was standing in a very open, wind blasted field on the edge of an icy babbling brook with my legs crossed. Yes, I really did fancy having one and fairly soon. ‘Where the hell can I have a wee?’ I thought to myself as I looked around the huge and freezing open field where there cruelly seemed to be no cover at all. As I scanned back across the field, the first thing that caught my eye was steam. As I then focussed, there was Peter standing with a couple of other guys. He however was standing in a rather unusual stance, hands on hips, back arched over backwards and this is where the steam was coming from, right in front of him. The lucky old bugger was in the middle of the open field having a bloody wee. I knew there was no way I could do that and that I was going to have to shoot the next peg with my legs folded and my speech impeded. I suppose you can pee in the middle of a field with your hands on your hips when you're nearly 90. I guess it just doesn't matter then. The headliners of this chapter haven’t even had a mention yet sorry, the Woodwards. So to the Woodwards. From the tales I overhear they were and are, not just great business people but also remarkably generous at the same time. I think this book has shown that you can be both. As a frozen food distributor, they helped Malcolm (and by the way co-founder Peter Hinchcliffe) a lot with the development and funding of Iceland and for a period were both investors and shareholders in it, as you know. Their agreement to let Malcolm use a cold store in North Wales was vital to Iceland’s’ progression in those early days. Jeremy, a cousin and a good few years’ younger than Nigel, at some point exited the food wholesale and distribution world and has, ever since I have known him, been a hotelier and restauranteur. He is strictly speaking too young to sneak into this book and get his own chapter but as my jogging partner whenever we meet up, he must get a cameo mention and he is definitely good at the restaurant game. When Jeremy and I first met he had a few restaurants but not long after that sold some of them off leaving himself with the Egerton Arms in Cheshire. He probably planned to retire but has now started another one in Tarporley called Coast and that is now also doing well. Not an easy world to be in but some people have a knack and the right brain and disciplines for it.

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Now, there’s something else you should know, Jeremy quite likes a spot of Chablis. Everyone talks of Brexit as I write, but if Jeremy is unable to drink Chablis after Brexit, there will be repercussions and I don’t think the various Governments involved have given this the consideration that it requires. It could prove very serious indeed. The other Woodward who I wanted to mention, also the only other one I really know, is Nigel. He is in his seventies hence a prime candidate for the book. I plan to meet him properly by checking into the Wynnstay again for the night and having dinner with him, my wife Ali and his wife Josey but in the event our diaries are too mad, Christmas is looming, and we have to postpone. We arrange a phone call and I then arrange for me to go for breakfast at the sumptuous Wynnstay. I set off in the driving rain at about 20 to 8 in the morning and around an hour later I’m in the warm classy surroundings of the hotel foyer. Everyone is being so nice to me. I’m a little early and then Nigel is soon spot-on time so we make our way through to his dining room where we ask the young lady for two coffees. ‘So, what’s this book all about then?’ quizzes Nigel. I went back to the beginnings of the whole thing where I had heard Jim Davies and Barry Owen telling some of their tales and how it then developed over the lunch where Malcolm was signing his book where it then occurred to me that a lot of the people in that room probably deserve to have a book written about them. He is one of them! “Nonsense”, he interjects. I carry on and now apologise to him that the beginning of the Woodward’s chapter is monopolised by tales of Peter Chantler. ‘What a lovely man, I only met him the once, but I have a photo somewhere here to prove it’, adds Nigel. ‘So, it’s really all about shooting legends then is it, Chris?’ he asks ‘Well yes, but also business legends, most of them in their 70s now who have been in and around Liverpool and have been very successful and the journey has been fun and games and also very noteworthy, just a bit of fun really Nigel’.

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“Right”, he said, and he now understood that it’s a sort of a homage to all the shooting/sporting fraternity and the tales that come from it.

Nigel & Peter, after a funny tale. At this stage, I have to point out that for the next hour and a bit I was in the company of someone who says things better than what I do. That last sentence being additional proof. Not a great position to be in, talking with someone like this about a book you have written, knowing that it might have been better if they had written it! We talk a bit more about Peter again as I can’t recall what his business(es) was called or indeed any of his son’s names! He is convinced that one of them was Simon, but we have to text Andy Pritchard to establish that we think the main business name was and still is Meadow Foods. I’ve heard of them and I google it and, wow, it is huge. It looks like Simon is at the helm now and he was born the same month and year as me. That will be a nice icebreaker if I try and persuade him to be one of the readers of my first draft. (In the event I never get around to it). I really should have checked with Simon that I have no facts wrong and that I have his permission to mention his Dad and his occasional outdoor toilet habits,

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but if I had done all the things I should do I would never get to publication and never raise anything for charity. While I am on the website, I also notice that a mate of mine, Damian McDonald, is their CFO. I resolve to try and nick his job if future books don’t lead to something that will reverse my financial status. So back with the Woodwards again (sorry boys). I hadn’t fully realised just what longevity they have in the family. The two elder statesmen that backed Malcolm Walker and Peter Hinchcliffe so nobly at the start of the Iceland story lived until they were well into their nineties. Nigel’s father Bill died in July of 2019 at the enormous age of 96, and then he lost his Mum in June 2020 also aged 96. He saw them every day and he deeply misses them even though so many people keep mentioning the ‘good innings’ and so on. It still clearly hurts a lot. He knows how lucky he has been. In a ‘do you know’ type moment he tells me that the two sides of the family had three sons each. Nigel was the eldest of Bill’s family and Jeremy was the youngest of Norman’s. Two brothers had married two of the sisters. By this time, his restaurant manager Seb is joining us and Nigel turns to him and remarks: ‘Do you know this lunatic has ten or so children’. I shake hands with Seb and mutter to him ‘six’ and he stills looks surprised even though Nigel was way out. At this juncture, we discuss a project (there’s a brief mention of this on the very last page of the book – yes, that fine hostelry is mine) that I have on the boil at the moment, and they offer to help me all they can with Seb at my disposal when I need. This is surely history repeating itself. Nigel is behaving as his father and uncle did before him and it now comes naturally to Seb to be exactly the same, having worked for 16 years with Nigel. He is like a chip off the old block and very keen to assist. Good people coach good people and so it passes on, I sincerely hope, and it will roll further on when they are gone. The legacy will reincarnate itself in each generation. Nigel is nine months younger than Malcolm and he considers it a huge pleasure to have known all the stars of this book. Woodwards started supplying the fledgling Iceland in 1971 at their first store in Oswestry. When they needed

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backing to fund the growth, Bill and brother Norman (Jeremy’s father) answered the call. Nigel remains still to this day, exuberant about the journey that the family business went on with Malcolm and Peter. ‘It was just the sheer energy of the two of them. Nothing scared them. They were non-stop and of course you also had Kwik Save growing at the same time - two amazing and once in a lifetime business. Obviously twice in a lifetime – but we all know what he meant. I told you that he should have written the book. By the mid-1980s when there were 16 stores at Iceland, Bill and Norman came out of it in a deal involving British Rail Pension Fund and it was all amicable. They did well and Iceland had done well having them on board. And Malcolm never forgets his friends. ‘Do you know that Malcolm, Barry Owen and Peter Bullivant all came to my Dad’s funeral, and shortly after that I received a beautiful handwritten letter from Malcolm with a large donation to my daughter Emma’s charity.’ He looks a little lost in the moment. I manage to say nothing for once to fill a gap in the conversation because I know he is musing and there is more to come. ‘So down to earth and so bloody clever’. Anyway, he changes the subject and tells me that Iceland have had a shooting day for close friends and associates for 33 years. He has kept a dairy of all of them and he is going to send me a photo from one of them.

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A fine gathering of very fine gentlemen His last words on his life story are again on his pals. He concludes how privileged he has been to know such an incredible bunch of guys. He mentions Andy P and what a great guy he is and how you have to admire him. I’m not having this, and I tell him that Malcolm would rather have had me as his side kick, and that he had written as much in the front of my copy of his book and while we are on the subject Pritchard owes me £21.50. Nigel smiles politely. Maybe Malcolm has already warned him about my delusions. I come away from the morning whistling to myself. I have thoroughly enjoyed it: the Woodward way has rubbed off on me and I am off to be fair and honest with absolutely everyone, for a while. I’m sure they will reciprocate. I still see Jeremy and his wife Tracey on occasions, and we still jog when we meet. It’s hard to tell we are moving but it is remarkable how many calories our watches tell us we have burnt. I wonder if we will be able to keep it up on our own during the lockdowns.

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Chapter Twelve Richard Kirk

The idea of adding an extra chapter for the venerable Mr Kirk was first raised when I was talking to Ray Bailey, the star of chapter 10. Ray said what a great idea and then immediately pointed out that Richard has the same head of hair as Nigel Chesters. I laughed politely because I actually hadn’t the foggiest who he was, but Ray quickly elaborated. He is a golfer (and his son an even better one) who once said had he not entered the profession of golf successfully he would probably have been snapped up by BT to bounce phone signals off his head. That’s not nice, is it? Richard doesn’t have much hair. Well, I say that but I don’t know that for a fact as he shaves his head, but we would assume he takes that course of action because the hair that remains is sparse and also largely gone in the middle area of the head. That happens to a lot of us of us males. I actually look as if I have absolutely loads of hair but when my head gets wet the truth is out, as it becomes immediately apparent that there isn’t much there to speak of at all - actually about eleven strands of it in total and they always fall forward down my forehead so I look like a tall Oliver Hardy. Google it please you younger readers. The reason I would like to bring Richard into this book is that during its writing he has increasingly reappeared on the general scene. He is of the right age for the book, he has had a fantastic and extraordinary business history himself and he also starred large in the story of Iceland. When he stands up at a dinner, watch out. A massive shaggy dog story is about to commence and unless someone like Ray can interrupt you are looking at 20 minutes minimum. The last one I heard was about Honda cars and farting and if you asked me to repeat it for a million quid I couldn’t. I was still laughing like a lunatic as the delivery was such an extraordinary spectacle.

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Aside from all this, if I didn’t include him in the book, he would probably sulk and then might also end up the butt of incessant jokes about his absence from said book when its stars happened to be gathered together for any reason at all. So, he’s in and welcome Richard. We must try and get a zoom call arranged. There follow a number of failed plans. At first, he can’t make it, then I can’t, then my internet fails while we are trying to do a Team’s meeting. (All the rage these days, these Team’s meetings). We telephone each other to plan another attempt to talk and I find out after that call that the Teams thing had failed originally because my ten-year-old had unplugged the family internet and popped it straight into his gadget. He gets a better signal apparently to play his game. Annoying but undeniably clued up for ten, I guess. What sort of things will the next generation be up to if Toby is doomed to one day be a fossil like me: the mind boggles. I want to publish soon so we meet up very socially distanced and masked (and all gelled up too but that’s between me and him). Although he is not the last chapter of the book itself, he is the last meeting I have before the book goes off to be type set or something (Martyn knows all about this) so it feels a bit like a sum up. The fantastic thing for me is that Richard has actually read it from front to back and even better he ‘loves it’. He really enjoyed it. For the second time in my life, I am speechless. He and I chew over whether his love of my book might just be because he knows the protagonists, but I have some back up reviews to hand from a couple of younger unconnected individuals that have read and enjoyed it also. Maybe it will sell a few copies… That he enjoyed it is great news to me and his very attractive and much younger fiancée, Harjit, confirms this to be the case. She enthuses: ‘Oh yes, he couldn’t put it down’. I don’t know Harjit all that well yet, so I decide immediately that it is too early to come straight back with: ‘I was like that when I read the History of Glue, I couldn’t put that down’.

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So, I remark instead on what a lovely and tidy house it is. Not as a time filler, it really is. That doesn’t mean much coming from me as I probably can’t tell what’s lovely or not. My house looks like the FBI have just done their very best to find that elusive missing microfilm and they had decided to do this on their way back from Tough Mudder where there were, on this occasion, no showers available. That’s a bit long winded but I think you should get the picture: people wipe their feet when they leave my house. It’s the kids’ fault of course but ours ultimately in not being strong enough at the time to make them do household chores and clean up after themselves. They will only finally empathise with what Alison and I have been through when they get their own kids and sleep deprivation gets the better of them. Their house is indeed lovely, one of a new development in Cheshire and they have been very well made, and not just thrown up. The lighting is lovely and there are some very large artworks around that will need to be discussed later. All the furniture is new. I only buy second hand or get free but that’s their taste and it looks great. I didn’t talk about the art at this point in case he thought I was casing the joint. So, reading the book has actually stirred Richard a little bit and brought back quite a few memories which he immediately begins to reminisce about as we step into his lounge and take a comfortable chair miles apart from each other. We are there for a quite a while and he has a lot ready for me, a real rollercoaster of a life to talk to me about. When I say to him that he needs to write a book himself, he confirms what I was suspecting: that many people have already suggested this. Like Malcolm Walker, Richard spent some time at Woolworths, in his case even longer. It really suited him, he loved the place and he progressed well. He was there from 1966 to 1978 by which time he had done so well financially that he was able to buy his first house outright in Dewsbury. Woolworths was the salesman’s dream. He loved it and it loved him. He came across Malcolm (and Peter Hinchcliffe) while he was there and several years later when he moved to be the area manager based in Rhyl, they re-engaged their friendships along with their wives. This was probably 1977 and Malcolm soon gave him a call telling him that he had something for him.

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Iceland had been started back in 1971 and during those years while at Woolies, Richard had been moved from area to area where he was basically sent in to solve problems at underperforming branches of the business. He was a store manager but had an ability to turn the results around. It was his forte and Malcolm being aware of this asked him if he wanted to come on board with them and sort out the CNC supermarkets that Iceland were taking over. The offer was a £10K a year salary and it was too much to resist. From 1977 onwards things were just so exciting, and he made lifelong friendships, many of them referred to in this book. On one particular occasion, he remembers, the first time he met Geoff Mason who turned up at the Rhyl head office. This initial encounter didn’t go well. Richard didn’t know who on earth Geoff was, but the stranger said he was a valuer. This didn’t ring true at the time and Richard was more than a bit suspicious. To cut a long story short, he made Geoff basically stand in a corner in the courtyard while he went off to confirm the unlikely story. All was explained and Geoff carried on his business and they have been mates ever since. Back then Richard recalls himself as probably ‘an arrogant little shit’ which is quite a statement for him to make. I sometimes look back on my early life and make statements like that, disparaging myself, so I do get where he’s coming from. We do tend to go back and make assumptions, but they are probably complete rubbish, it’s still a bit of shock to hear him say that. From around 1977 they moved the Head Office from Rhyl to Deeside and Richard spends a lot of his time looking round for sites for the now fast expanding Iceland with, you guessed it, Johnny Prestt. This was apparently a laugh a minute. Johnny in his heyday seems to have been a bit of a practical joker and Richard was the same. Following Malcolm and Peter’s car one day, Johnny and Richard saw Malcolm cut up another driver on the main road. It was the early days of mobile phones in cars and Malcolm was definitely in the wrong on the driving altercation, so Johnny immediately rang Malcolm‘s car phone and gave him a load of abuse in a very convincing Scouse accent. Johnny is very good at accents and Malcolm emerged from the journey a little shellshocked having been threatened with all sorts by this angry and persistent Scouser who kept calling him back and threatening what he was going to Malcolm and he knew who he was and where he lived and so on.

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Classic. Richard engineered practical jokes wherever he could and involved unsuspecting visitors to Head Office in them. At one stage in Iceland there was a bit of an affair going on between two members of the management. Richard had a supplier call in to see him and proposed that the supplier ring the male party in this affair and pretend to be the husband of the female. To get the maximum benefit himself out of this Richard actually went down into the victim’s office so he was there when the call came in. That is class! It came as quite a shock as the supplier was excellent at the role and the unsuspecting victim was terrified when the guy announced he was in reception and on his way up the stairs to give him a good thrashing. “Why haven’t I mentioned Tony Southworth in my book?” Richard asks. “That’s probably an oversight,” I reply, knowing the name but not recalling who he was exactly. I am immediately informed that he was the man behind Telegraph garages, and he was a fantastic character who sadly died young in around 1999. We lose so many along the way and we are blessed if we are still here in later life. The 80s as they came along, were the heyday for this gang. They all loved retail and lived for it, eating, drinking and sleeping it. Richard remembers the Friday nights out to restaurants in the flash cars and of course the company plane! As the old saying goes ‘they were living the dream’. I told Richard that this obsession with retail was part of the reason I actually left Iceland in 1992 because I could see myself being addicted to the fast pace of life myself and I decided to jump off the rollercoaster. I do wonder, but only for a brief moment, what I missed? “A day without laughter is a day wasted”, Richard muses. He had such a good time, and whilst they worked so hard, they loved it so much. And throughout all that time they made sure they looked after their staff and that is one of the very many fine reasons why Iceland is such a great company. Richard took that ethos to Peacocks and is back again now at Iceland continuing the theme. At one stage during the journey, he did fall out with Malcolm. This was following the appointment of an external consultant to look into ways to improve the lacklustre state of the business at the time.

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Richard must have taken this as an affront and, already being a non-executive director of Peacocks, he decided to jump ship and join them. Malcolm and he didn’t speak for quite a few years after that. They finally did when Malcolm left Iceland for a period himself and Richard one day called him out of the blue and invited him out for a day’s shooting. It wasn’t the best of times for Malcolm and he was very grateful for Richard making contact - it saved their friendship and was a noble thing for him to do. ‘Life’s too short’, he adds. They are now fully reunited, and Richard is back working with Malcolm, and remarkably working full time and has barely had a day off in 18 months, so he is obviously fit for a man who is now in his seventies. I don’t know if it’s a defective gene, but he doesn’t seem to have grown up either. There is still a boyish glint in the eyes and is one I have been seeing constantly throughout the other chapters. The Peacock years bring with them some juicy stuff but because it is punctuated constantly with “off the record“ and “between you and me”, I can’t actually remember what I can say and what I can’t. I did ask Martyn about all of this, and he said it was a journalistic sort of code. A “Fight Club” sort of rule – you know – the first rule of Fight Club, “Don’t talk about Fight Club” so, I’m sorry but I can’t tell you. If he was to write ‘his book’ he definitely has that seemingly essential ingredient in it. That great comeback resilience that he has lost everything and got it back again more than once. The public love those tales and he has some amazing gossip about some of the people he encountered. He has done the rags to riches and back to rags again thing and some of the people involved in his journey, who he has decided not to name here, were directly responsible for his downfall and for the demise of the businesses too. When it happened, he dusted himself down and came back, and even stronger it seems. There is definitely a book there and if he could get down on paper some of the advice on his life’s lessons it would be a cracker. Harjit says he needs someone to write it. I wait for one of them to suggest me. I think I even started to sort of whistle in a very expectant fashion.

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Nothing happens. For such a tidy house, an unexpected clump of tumbleweed cartwheels across the lounge to compound the embarrassing silence and the sound of distant church bells. When he tells me what he came across during his career, the extraordinary selfcentred behaviour of certain specimens in retail (and the commercial world generally) who simply focus on their own monetary gain, it’s shocking and very sad. They took it upon themselves to asset strip decent businesses for their own benefit, and while Richard is a savvy businessman, he clearly is not like that. They don’t get named here but wouldn’t it be lovely if they read the book and recognise themselves in it. Do I hope that they’re not happy now and that they look back and wish they had done things a different way? Do they wish they had used their obvious skills to build a decent and sustainable business, with a strong ethical ethos and were now surrounded by a bunch of loyal and similar pals? I don’t know and frankly I don’t care. As Ray advised earlier on, “I don’t waste my time on them anymore.” The people in this book have long lasting friendships. The businesses they created endure to this day in some form or other. The ethos they created has led to many happy folk now sitting at home reminiscing fondly about their time at Mason Owen, Mason & Partners, DWF, Bullivant, Iceland and so on. The asset strippers and the bad venture capitalists don’t have that. No one is reminiscing fondly about them. They might have fancy watches and yachts but grand experiences they must certainly lack and old pals to share them with. God - that was a good bit. Martyn said he liked the tumbleweed, but that wasn’t what I was referring to. Richard’s move from Iceland to Peacocks, ‘fishfingers to knickers’ as Malcolm later put it, was littered with extraordinary events. The business was hugely successful, he enjoyed it enormously, but he wishes he had made one or two different decisions.

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Moving on. I personally will only do one more thing in later life for the ten or so that separated me from my meagre wealth. I will put them all into one WhatsApp Group with an apt name that I haven’t come up with yet and make some initial suggestions of how they can take over the world or similar with their various ‘skills’ but let’s save that for later. We go through to the kitchen for a bite to eat and what a spread I see before me. An amazing prawn cocktail starter, pie (from the local butcher) and mash followed by lemon tart, ice cream and fruit. I’ve been back as a vegetarian for six weeks now and I had totally forgotten to tell them in advance, so I tuck in without a word, knowing that my stomach will rumble for days. It prefers it when I am veggie. We do get onto the art when we are in the kitchen when the large Andy Warhol takes my eye. On the wall facing it there’s also a Roy Lichtenstein. “Any dates set for the wedding yet?” I ask them. “No” is the clear response, and they will leave it until the Prime Minister tells us all when he plans to open the country again. “Would you consider booking the rugby club?” I ask in great hope and innocence. “No thanks”. “Would you like me to head off home now and leave you to get to bed?” ‘We thought you would never ask’ What a night though and when I read this chapter again I get the sense of rush that I had that night. The por man and his lady are so busy it’s just eat, sleep, work, repeat. I ask him for a photo, but he never gets around to it. I steal one from somewhere else knowing that they can’t sue me as I am not making any money out of it!

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Take a holiday Richard, they can manage without you.

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Chapter Thirteen Stephen Laing and other accountants Funnily enough I had come across Stephen Laing, who I’ve referred to in past chapters, when I joined Arthur Young McClelland Moores in 1981 as a trainee Chartered Accountant, or an articled clerk as they were known at that time. I started on £3,900 a year (that’s more than JP was on - ha!) and later that same year it leapt up to £4,100. I’m getting a nose bleed, what would I do with all that money? Stephen was a lovely fellow and very polite and friendly to all levels of employee – regardless of who they were. Actually, all the partners were great at AYMM, and I remember very fondly Joe Hurst who was the senior partner at the time. When I once got in the lift to go and photocopy something on the partners’ floor, the 13th, he was to my total horror already in that very same lift. I was uncharacteristically mortified, and I wondered why we had pretty much drawn lots to perform this simple task, some basic photocopying. What could be so bad about jumping in a lift and sneaking up to use the best copier the firm had. Now I knew. That upper floor was sacrosanct you see, partners only, and I hadn’t thought I would encounter any of them as It was lunchtime for a start and I had only gone and jumped into a lift with the main man. So, there I was, literally in shock to see him, the boss, in the lift. I had to get in or I would have looked even more of a chump. A chump that aggravates the main man by stopping the progress of his lift only to stand in the corridor of the 12th floor with his mouth wide open. Should I say something clever like: ‘Going down?’

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No, I couldn’t, and I had to get in and then it got worse. ‘I don’t know where you think you are going young man, but you can’t go up to the partners’ floor’, he said, with a deadpan expression. I wasn’t smart or even calm enough to think of a great excuse, such as: ‘I was heading down but I’ll jump in for the ride, Sir’. I had no answer and I could only groan internally, and kind as he was, he put me out of my misery, and added before I could reply: ‘You’re too tall!’. And he laughed his way off down the corridor. I sneaked in and copied like I was a spy or in the SAS leaving explosives. Actually, I am still in contact regularly with his son Charlie, a chip off the old block and a lovely fellow. He and I have the same birthday, with me being much older though. Charlie Hurst has never been in the army, but you would think he had been. He is always clean cut, smart and always slim. There, that should get me a discount on my insurance premium, as Charlie has been a leading light in that sector for decades. And then there was Frank Taylor and what a star he was. As the head of the insolvency department at AYMM, which then dropped the MM and became AY, and then merged with Ernst & Whinney, and became EY (phew, are you still with me?) he was a Liverpool household business name. He was also a real sport and one year he agreed to play the part of the narrator in the Christmas pantomime that I wrote (Oh yes, I did) for the office staff to put on. ‘Buttons Undone’ was its title, and if you promise to buy it I will publish that too. He ad-libbed throughout and he was totally hilarious. It didn’t bother me one bit that his ad-libs were better than my script as everyone probably assumed that I had written them anyway. He ran a great insolvency team there at EY and they seemed to have a load of fun.

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In 1993 when I came back from a year travelling (my first mid-life crisis), I had a full beard and long curly hair with multi coloured beads in. (I can explain that some other time). I went to EY and Mark Palios, one of Frank’s boys at that stage, thought it would be OK if I pretended to be a window cleaner. By the by, that insolvency team at the time, with Mark becoming the natural prankster successor to Frank, were renowned for their jokes, jibes and ribs. Considering they were the team that had to deal with the trauma and sadness of failed businesses, just like undertakers they had a sharp sense of humour and the absurd. Anyway, spurred on by Mark, I went up and walked all along the large ledges knocking all his papers off until Frank recognised me. He took it well. I don’t know why people say accounting is boring, it’s not and I loved it. Er…. anyway… moving on. So, I’ve mentioned Mark Palios, who then went on to head up Coopers and PwC, and the Football Association, and finally his beloved Tranmere Rovers but there were loads of interesting folk. Martyn Best (yep, that fellow who wrote one of the Forewords and has had the joy of trying to edit me) was also there, and he and I first met in 1983 and have maintained a growing friendship across the decades. How can anyone say that accountancy is boring when those two are of that persuasion, and would you believe that Martyn is now giving Mark a bit of help at Tranmere, as well as all sorts of odd things – he’s as bad as me. I can’t now do a long list can I, or someone will be offended if I miss them out, but they were all cracking guys and girls, and I do mention a few later in the Chapter as they spring to mind. Of course, with Mark in our office, (have I mentioned that he was also a Tranmere Rovers football player?) we made a great football team. Mark had played many hundreds of senior professional games of proper football, and another accountant, a trainee at the time, was Trevor Birch and he had been a reserve at Liverpool, and in fact, would you believe, Bill Shankly’s last signing? Trevor went on to be CEO at Chelsea, Everton, Swansea, and many others and is now the Chief Executive at the English Football League – there must have been something in the water of that building!

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Actually, I was a much better footballer than any of them of course. I had played Cornwall under-12s when I was only ten, but I don’t like to go on about it. With us four and a bunch of young and fit lads, our team was pretty good, and in fact, pretty awesome. I don’t know if it is a mistake to let out that I was the prodigy that had played county under-12s football at only ten, but there it is, it’s out there now and I’ll probably get asked to play in celebrity matches now once the books have started selling and the charity is content. Anyway, back to Steven Laing. Oh, hold on, we once played against another firm of accountants called Coopers and Lybrand and at half time it was 7- nil to us. I overheard their partner suggesting to our partner, Trevor Leary, that we call it 14 - nil and all go and have a beer. Trevor said no chance and we went on to win 18-2. How on earth they got the two I don’t recall. Maybe we declared at 18 and went off for the last ten minutes. Oh sorry, Steven Laing. I haven’t been in touch with Stephen over the years, but he has to be in this book. Every one of the other protagonists has mentioned his name and have added “amazing accountant”, “decent bloke” and so on to the epithets. You’ll remember his affectionate nickname – “stainless” – and it was well deserved. I guess I haven’t come across him much recently as he doesn’t shoot or fish. I didn’t know whether to try and get his number and have a chat. I had much the same thought process when considering Pam Jones of Bullivant Jones. I decided that because I was not really in touch with either of them, I would get some material on them when I sent the drafts around the protagonists. So, rightly or wrongly, it is cameo roles for them. Another character from my days at EY was Steve Stuart. He was a few years older than me and yes, quite a character. Massive Liverpool fan and so well connected in the city that he might actually be a part of it. I had a bad start with him which he doesn’t remember. (He doesn’t remember yesterday these days).

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The very first day I began in the Liverpool office of AYMM, was after a bunch of us had been on a training course in Durham for six weeks. Here we were, all excited, probably still half-cut to be honest and standing in the main open plan office in Silkhouse Court in Liverpool. Someone asked me what I had been doing at the weekend and I said I had been fishing with my Dad. Opening their two palms out in front of me about eight inches apart, they asked ‘Was it this big?’ I did a spontaneous, flamboyant, and huge wave of my arms outward shouting: ‘No, it was this BIG!’. As I did this, Steve walked around the corner and I nearly took his head off. We had never before met and the first thing I did to him was knock his specks off and bloody his nose. Not a good career move. Thankfully, as I said, he has forgotten and forgiven – well, forgotten anyway, knowing Steve. Now, rather curiously, I am in the opposite situation where I must try and forgive Steve for something terrible he has done! So, let me tell you how he got plastered in Paul Askew’s lovely Liverpool restaurant, The Arts School, when we were all taking Andy P out on that annual thank you for all his trips. Oh, do you know, it’s just struck me that Alison might have a point, and maybe I do go out a lot. ‘What’s wrong with getting plastered occasionally with old mates’, you ask? Well, nothing as such, but you shouldn’t get so drunk, as Steve did that day, that you order one of the largest and most expensive bottles of wine that Paul had (with all of us who were there sharing the cost) and you don’t actually remember ordering it. You’ve all heard of that hugely expensive Petrus – well, this was a bottle of Petrus’s Dad. I really thought I was going to have to wash up that night or give Paul my house. As it happened, I had been saving up some cash for myself – a secret sort of fund. You end up doing that when you have loads of kids, a sort of a ‘running away’

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fund. That night I reluctantly passed it all over to the restaurant and all the while pretending it didn’t physically hurt. It was very nice wine of course and the story has passed into legend and Steve has been mostly forgiven. Unusually, every time I see him, Paul apologises for the incident more than Steve and it wasn’t in any way his fault. It was actually while we were proper accountants that Andy P’s liking for expensive wine started to evolve. I tried to stitch him up at my flat one evening. Not the tiny flat I mentioned in his chapter, but a much bigger one I had moved into after that loft space.. I had a dinner party and I syphoned a cheap plonk into a fancy expensive bottle and vice versa, with expensive stuff going into the cheap bottle. It didn’t work as when he tasted what should have been the decent stuff he virtually spat it out. He went down to his car to get some ‘proper stuff’ and we never mentioned it again. One-nil, Andy P. Sticking with accountants, I’ve already mentioned Martyn Best. He and I have been back in touch a lot recently and he is in fine form. He has various business interests and never sits still. Like me, he’s got this natural resilience and the very same values that I have been talking about throughout the book. When he’s not working hard, he undertakes massive cycle rides, and when he’s not doing the odd mad bike ride, he encourages me to do some mad things for charity – like walk 1 million steps in 2 months As a consequence, we have indeed seen a lot of each other and I am anxious that his resulting foreword might be a better read than my book, especially as it has just dawned on me that his wide-ranging editor role gives him the last chance to write in the book. Anyway, I can at least give him the blame for any things that aren’t quite right. Reminiscing on my former accounting pals, whatever happened to Mike Hill? He took me on a project once in Norwich and we drove there in his Fiat X19. Do you know that is a diminutive, in this case silver, two-seater sports car. A four wheeled sardine can.

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He was a good driver, and it was fun, but not the easiest thing to get into and out of. The hotel we stayed in there was palatial but me and Mike had lost something in translation in the weeks preceding this job. When we had discussed the existence of a gym at the hotel, I thought we had both agreed to visit it as much as we could. It was a big surprise to me to discover that he thought playing pool was a gym activity. I wondered where he went after AYMM, and some had said he worked for a supercar company. I asked Martyn and he confirmed that he went and worked for Nissan Motorsport, and that Martyn had actually been his guest at the Le Mans 24-hour race. There’s a great tale itself, but listening to it, I could only wonder how my invite had been lost in the post. To my great surprise, I also learned that he is now a real gym goer himself and massively fit – but I need to see proof of that. I would love to catch up with him and Helen, his back then girlfriend and now wife. The must be celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary soon! When I think of Mike, I also think of Duran Duran and Mike and Helen’s brilliantly noisy, dance-filled parties. Actually, while I am still in charge of the keyboard, I can get one thing off my chest and it’s about David Weir, one of the other partners at EY. While I was in my first year there, I worked at Duple Coachbuilders in Blackpool. We worked hard and long hours and as the days passed and David’s’ review visit loomed we started to dream of what we would have for lunch that day when he undoubtedly treated us – a well-known partner-visit traditional treat. Having worked so hard, we fantasied about our reward that lunchtime from him. Fish & Chips, a pub lunch, the possibilities were endless, and we had prepared a list of the nearby recommended eating establishments. When he did arrive, he sat in the room looking at the files, while we looked alternatively at him, the clock and then back to him. The excitement built and we were almost at fever pitch. For a start we didn’t know if he would suggest 12, 12.30 or even 1 as lunch. It was all just too much to bear. Suddenly he announced, out of the blue, at 12.20 and in his broad Scottish accent: ‘I think it time for a spot of lunch!’ We all leapt up and grabbed our strategically placed coats. As we stood there, togged up for our treat, we looked across at his desk.

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There he sat, his eyes still glued to the boring bloody audit files, unmoved, while his hand dropped to the left and brought a Tupperware butty box out of his briefcase. You bugger David, I will never forgive you for that. And then there was Vin Staniforth. What a legend he was/is. He came to the firm as the marketing guy and we hit it off immediately – probably because he wasn’t actually an accountant. With completely in tune senses of humour, we had a ball and I was completely in awe of his ability to draw brilliant cartoons in just seconds. It was made all the more fascinating for me as he was left-handed. We discussed loads of ideas of things we could do together as a business. I think the last one was greetings cards and we had some great ideas, even though I say so myself. I remember we were creating one series of cards where we examined a theme of how small changes or misunderstandings in history could have changed so much had they gone a different way. I had been hoping early on in this book exercise that he would be able to illustrate this book. He had emigrated to the US after leaving EY and I still wonder whether it was to get away from me and our brilliant ideas, so I was then concerned that he actually wouldn’t want to do any of his super illustrations as it would bring all those memories back. Vin had already done a few Christmas cards for businesses and they were so funny, and we could have been the new Moonpig many moons before them. Oh, I’ve just remembered a few others – Graham Bond, another great member of our football team, and now a top partner at RSM; and what about Don Bailey, the Mort, Dave Moore, Perry Christian, Carey Smith, Janice Pike, Linda Butler, Brian Watson and oh no, I’ve just done what I said I wouldn’t. The more I remember, the more I’m going to get into trouble with those I don’t mention, so I’ll stop there, as I can always mention them in the next book. Let me know if I’ve not mentioned you. So, what would I say about accountancy? If anyone out there is considering a career in accountancy, just do it. If it turns out to be boring like you might fear, then you might turn out to be the most interesting person there – so that’s not a bad outcome.

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Chapter Fourteen Graeme Marrs and other Park Presidents

I simply have to talk about this guy and it will lead us into other past Presidents of the famous Birkenhead Park Rugby Club. They are all so loveable and important yet the tales of them will sadly disappear, as they do and we do, as the years roll by. This is one of my incentives for putting this all together, we just can’t lose all these memories. This is the last proper chapter of the book (I know, it’s sad, and please stop crying) and while I will focus on a slightly different element of life in those days, there is a common theme of goodness and insobriety. Graeme Marrs himself came to my mind when I was writing about Geoff Mason’s huge office in chapter 4. We sadly lost Graeme recently as he neared 80 and many people are the worse off for his passing. He was a true legend, and a Birkenhead Park and a rugby man through and through. It was into Graeme Marrs’s probably larger office that I had sauntered into in 1989 as the Captain-to-be of said Birkenhead Park Rugby Club. I was with my Vice Captain, Alex Chapman, lawyer, and Yorkshireman, and we had some notes on what we wanted to discuss with Graeme, the then President of the Club.

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We wanted to try and make 1989 to 1990 a successful season for our club. I am sure we both muttered ‘bloody hell’ as we walked into the room, as it was just so inordinately vast. This was the nerve centre of Meade King Robinson, purveyors of oils, waxes and fats and before even that probably the office of someone hugely important in the shipping industry way back in Liverpool’s maritime heyday. This company became the home of Phil Tarleton, another Birkenhead Park stalwart himself, on and off the pitch and a contemporary of mine. I will write more on him if I write a book about my era or if I am called to make a statement to the police. You could have fitted a couple of full-size snooker tables in this room. As it was then, it had a boardroom table, Graeme’s desk itself, another large oval desk, a seating area of leather chairs with a coffee table and floor to ceiling fitted wooden cupboards all along one side of the room as you walked in and to your left, probably 40 feet of them. Still reeling from the powerful smell of old leather and wood together with the sheer opulence of the surroundings we tried to get focused on our to-do lists. I pointed at players (we needed some more of these and some good ones would have been nice) and Alex nodded. I pointed at a pre-season tour and he again nodded. Either of those would do as opening topics to this landmark, game changing meeting. We were serious in our objectives, and we were ready to make Birkenhead Park have the most amazing season, but it wasn’t quite what Graeme had uppermost in his mind. Graeme started to make his way across the room, quite a journey for someone with his lifestyle, and in a booming but still quite distant voice he greeted us. ‘Chappers, Wainhouse, How the devil are you!?’ Before we replied, and started our grand speech, there was an unexpected knock at the door and to Graeme’s ear-piercing ‘COME’, it obediently opened and in peered a sheepish AJ. AJ, one A.J. Ravenscroft, an eminent stockbroker in Liverpool and the North West was a loveable and kindly bear of a man who was a drinking chum of Graeme, a fan of the club but not in any way an expert on rugby strategy.

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I felt I had to mouth to him as he came in, while Graeme was still several metres short of completing his journey to the table, to ask what the hell he was doing here? ‘Haven’t the foggiest, old chap, Marrs bar asked me to come along.’ he whispered back. He rubbed his hands together and looked around the room. Strange, as it wasn’t cold. Graeme had by now reached the boardroom table and as he rested his chubby fingers over the chair at the head of the table, where we had all parked, he asked. ‘Now, what do you want to start with gentlemen?’. Momentum was now taking place and he mysteriously now carried on past us and away from the table. ‘Players, Graeme, and then maybe a pre-season tour I think’, I replied, glancing at Alex for reassurance as Graeme trundled away. ‘No, no, no.’ he chuckled as he opened the cupboard doors where he had finally come to rest. ‘Red or white? And as he said this, he swung the double cupboard doors open to reveal row upon row of bottles of wine. The top half was all red, lovingly and symmetrically assembled on the shelves and the lower half was actually all fitted fridges which were full of white and rose! Literally hundreds of bottles. Was this room also a bonded warehouse I thought? ‘Jolly Good’ muttered AJ rubbing his hands again. That’s what he had been looking around the room for! I don’t think I need to go into any of the details about how well the meeting went, or for that matter the following season. It turned not to be a game changing meeting – and not exactly how Alex and I had intended.

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We staggered out of there half-cut at about four-thirty, and we only got away because Alex came up with a brainwave and claimed he had to go back and sign the post at work. He didn’t really because he was still only a junior lawyer, but he knew the Berman’s partners all used that same excuse when they wanted to leave the Hole in the Wall pub or Rigby’s near their offices. No one noticed he was upping his role there. I have asked Phil T whether the company still has the same gargantuan booze reserves and, yes, it does. I suspect there might be even more there now as Phil T actually put the Boo in Boozing. The Presidents of Park, and let’s be honest those of all clubs around the globe, are all legends in their own right so these few anecdotes could be matched by similar tales all over the UK and the world. I will pause and go back to 1985, when I was in my early years at the Club. The then President was one Henry Simpson. Tweed jacket, scruffy worn-out corduroy trousers, piercing blue eyes, a grip like a vice and covered almost from nose hair to hush puppies in snuff. What an absolute star. For his presidency to coincide with the captaincy of ‘Nutty’ Nick Powell was one of those once in a millennium type of events. Like the demise of the dinosaurs or the industrial revolution. We had a good side too and we were gathering sometime in September for a pre-match snack while on tour prior to taking on the current Cornish Champions, Camborne. It fell silent in the slightly dated lounge of the St Ives hotel where we were staying. Henry addressed us along the following lines: “Listen chaps, I just want to have a few words with you before Nicholas takes over for a warm-up. “Today is a bloody big game for the club and might I say a ‘landmark’ game. These chaps are the current Cornish champions. They won't be taking any prisoners today, but we will show them what Birkenhead Park are all about. “Don’t get me wrong boys, I want you to play hard, damn hard, but I want you to play fair. “I don't want to see any unnecessary violence. “I don't want anyone to be sent off and I want you above all to always remember that you are ambassadors of this fine historic club.

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“I want you to carry this on after the game when we have defeated them and then treat our lovely hotel owner and his premises with great respect. “Go out there today lads and do us proud. “See you after the game. Thank you.” He got up red-faced, clearly very moved by his own words and very much wishing that he could take the field of rugby again today. Looking at his still strong physique, it would not have been a bad thing if he could have. To be fair, this was a very rousing talk. We all felt the passion in it, and though know it isn't exactly what he said it was something very close to those lines and it lifted us, without doubt. Actually, by contrast, I had a different team talk while playing for Cheshire later that same year. We had been raised to a frenzy by the fierce warm-up routine of the then captain. We had been stamping up and down on the floor screaming ‘123, 123, 123’ and our feet hit the floor and all that stuff, when out of the blue, a loud knock on the door interrupted us. Thinking it was the referee to tell us we had a couple of minutes until kick off, we all stopped in our tracks and looked at the door as it opened. A chap with a red nose, flush cheeks and a deerstalker popped his head round the corner and in a ridiculously (almost made up) pompous accent completely diffused all the good work our captain had done with the words: ‘Good hunting, Chesh!’. If the ventriloquist dummy Lord Charles was based on anybody real then this was indeed this chap, and he only lacked the monocle. Shortly afterwards we shuffled out lamely on to the pitch to get bullied by Lancashire or Yorkshire as a direct result of his interruption and ‘encouragement’. Henrys talk, however, was another matter and made a massive contribution towards our defeating the Cornish champions 11-9 on their own ground in front of a huge partisan crowd.

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We followed Henry's code of contact almost to the letter. Only when a brawl was started by the Cornish forwards in the far corner of the ground did we step in and soundly thrash them at pugilism as well as at rugby. Unfortunately, though, Henry himself came off the bench to join us in the scuffle and was sent off by the referee to the very top tier of the stand, giving us a fine example of exactly the sort of conduct he had begged us all to refrain from. Later that evening as we returned back to the hotel, we were a couple of seconds too late to witness Henry falling backwards off a barstool onto a glass topped coffee table. Only a former rugby player in his seventies (eighties probably, I don’t recall) could do this without being very badly injured. He was lying there in a pile of glass and shattered timber just as Nick Powell stood over him and asked him whether this wasn’t, once again in fact, the very same sort of conduct that he had warned us against. ‘Bugger off, Powell and get me a gin and tonic’, he responded. Powell was/is a head case. The tales I could tell about him, would be well worth reading, if only there were no libel laws in the UK. Ouch, you’re twisting my arm, so let me see if I can manage one even though he was never President of the Club. Before I do, I want to pause here to make a note that to be a President of Birkenhead Park you don’t need to be a lunatic, or an alcoholic basket case, or both. There is very little doubt that those qualities really help for the role but we need to reflect for a moment to remember the more understated and conservative Presidents of that fine Club who have held the esteemed role and performed admirably. Chris Beech has to be one of those. While calm and reserved he was there to help that rugby club through its tough times. An unsung hero and not the only one in the Club’s past. He would constantly donate his own company money to drag the club through the bad times, which in his case were the early 90s. He got personally sued for one matter, while doing the right thing, but he still carried on. More recently the club has had other great sponsors and benefactors such as the amazing McNally brothers for one (actually two – John and Mark) and others

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who have not yet been President such as Phil Tarleton and Chris Chidley for example. I should never have started to name names, but they don’t do it for recognition. Fellows such as John Horwood, Charlie Hillock, Ritchie Morris (he was actually another of those lunatics), Clive Plummer (now sadly lost to golf) were all understated and brilliant ambassadors for the rugby club. They should not be forgotten just because they didn’t come onto the pitch in Cornwall with their fists swinging, laced with rum offering to take on the entire stand in a boxing match. So, back to Nutty, and on one skiing trip to the French Alps he upset so many people that he opened an account at the Interflora in the village. I believe he peaked one night at a restaurant called Nyon in the Morzine and Les Gets ski resort. The owner, Big Pascal (not to be confused with Little Pascal down the road at the Dixie) was a fantastic host and actually not unlike Nutty. Still managing to carry off longish (and I’m pretty sure, regularly dyed) strawberry blonde (ginger) hair while in their fifties and both with very well lived-in faces. They got on like a house on fire with both speaking bad English in the same gravelly tone that suggested a lifetime of Gitanes and Merlot. The lunch there almost ended after about three hours when a couple of us cheekily suggested it might be an idea to do some skiing that afternoon. After all we were paying for lift passes, equipment hires, etc. . ‘Absolutely’, quipped Nut, ‘let’s go. All things in moderation I always say’. Several of us were standing up by this time gathering hats and gloves and the noise of old cracking knees must have been a cue for Big Pascal as he was instantly stood at the head of our table with a very long bottle of yellow liquid and eight shot glasses cleverly grasped on the fingers of one large gnarled arthritic hand. ‘Ah, it’s only polite’ said Nut, falling back into his seat with a groan of pleasure. If you had dipped your finger into the end of this liquid to try and guess what it was, testing the very smallest of drips on your tongue, you probably would not have guessed that it was actually meant for human consumption. Your best guess might be that it was for cleaning coins or de-mossing decking. But to drink it? Don’t be bloody daft.

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Anyway, you probably know what happens next. Nut suggests after necking his first coin cleaner/cough mixture concoction that it would be rude not to return the complement and so the cycle of mayhem commences on a new level. After many down-in-ones the bottle was empty and we then ‘need’ a cool beer to take away the taste and the heartburn that the corrosive combination has caused. I think the heartburn is just an external symptom of the internal injuries and is a pre-curser to massive organ damage in later life. After that, another bottle of red had opened itself and it has gone dark outside. We had of course missed all the lifts down but carried on drinking as Pascal had offered us the use of the staff lift when they went off site. We were soon stumbling towards it and pushing and barging each other like nine-year olds. (Apologies to any nine-year olds reading here). As we waited for the bubble lift to come up in the pitch dark, we heard a set of skis fall to the floor. There could only be one possible explanation - someone had dropped them, you are all thinking In different circumstances, such as normal daylight, above zero temperature and when sober, there would have been another possible explanation namely someone might be putting their skis down on the floor to clip into them and then ski off. However, it was the middle of the night, pitch black and not the time to even think of skiing while stinking rotten drunk and incapable. As a general rule, if you can’t stand up, skiing and many other normally upright activities should be avoided. Unless you’re Nutty Nick. Yes indeed, the next thing we heard was the sound of skies deliberately being let to fall to the ground, and we then heard boots being clipped into skis and the scraping noise of someone paralytic, totally drunk setting off to try and ski down a mountain. ‘See you down there, losers’, he croaked. By rights these should have been and very nearly were his last words. All we could do was yell stop but there was no point. Very soon complete silence resumed.

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Pascal was somewhat furious (point of note here as there was to have been only the second bad swear word in this book and I’m sorry but that’s how furious Pascal was) and he predicted Nutty was very likely to die unless we acted quickly. He urged us to hurry so we could get down and report him missing. Pascal and his wife alerted both the police and the guys on the mountains that drive the massive piste-bashing machines at night. They did find him. He was actually sound asleep, on the edge of a ski slope in deep snow. If it wasn’t for Pascal, one of those piste machines would have surely run over him. When he was half carried out of the rescue vehicle and plonked in front of Pascal and his wife, she told him off as best she could while half in tears and completely hysterical. ‘Nutty, what were you thinking, you could have died. We have been looking for you for hours. With very little thought, he replied instantly: ‘Well, you’re not very good at it then, are you?’. Mrs Pascal did something she had probably never done before, and with one swift move, she instinctively, accurately and with all her might punched another human full in the face. Back to Interflora, Nutty. When I mentioned wine before, I have just remembered the Chateaux Margaux night of 1986. That’s not the vintage of the wine by the way, it’s the year I was pestered into going skiing when I knew that in reality, I couldn’t afford an easyJet ham and cheese toastie, let alone a week of mayhem with big spenders. I know I’m supposed to be talking about former Presidents of the rugby club here but there are links. Mark McNally was President for 11 years and his ample brother John is just about to be as I type these last chapters. I also believe this is too good a story to omit, especially as I have nearly finished the book. I was very seriously skint at the time of this trip because I had failed my accountancy exams (marking error) and I had to pay for my retakes and take unpaid leave to do them at the same time.

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‘it will only cost you a couple of hundred francs, Westy,’ said Mark the one-day future President of Birkenhead but at that time just a player and a mate. I knew that wasn’t the case but for some reason I went anyway. I could not have predicted, however, that it would have cost as much as it did as I found myself walking into the most expensive restaurant in Morzine, totally smashed, all my ski gear still on including ski boots for some bizarre reason and with just a few francs and a pound note on my person. What could go wrong? I did also have a very large useless collection of ATM receipts on me and I had worn a track backwards and forwards to that generous machine from the Irish bar as I refused to take any more than 50 francs out at a time. We settled straight into it. John McNally, Mark’s younger and absolutely ridiculously badly behaved brother, had already dropped a salt and pepper set into Mark Ferguson’s (player and in later years a coach) ski jacket pocket and things were very quickly getting out of hand. There was already an egg in that same pocket for a start. Someone accidently let the F word out of the bag and the others at our table noisily shushed him immediately glancing around sheepishly at the couple on the next table. The guy there immediately reassured us: ‘Don’t mind us lads we don’t mind the banter, we are from the UK too, so carry on and enjoy yourselves!’ Oh dear, that was a schoolboy error. A matter of seconds later, after what was said next he had to immediately speak to us again, slightly red faced: ‘Lads, actually, my wife doesn’t like the ‘C word’ if you wouldn’t mind!’ The night got more boisterous and after ordering scrambled egg as a side order (which we had done for some reason all week) some of it started to fly around. The wine waiter arrived and Mark McNally, who had been musing over the wine list, chirped up: ‘Lads, Chateaux Margaux, 160 francs a bottle, bet that’s delish’ He was/is so rich with his care homes, his-fat cat approach, his Range Rover, and, well, you know the score. He also knew I couldn’t afford a thimble full. ‘Yes, get that’, added John, ‘Westy will pay, ha ha!’ They both laugh.

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If you need help to try and imagine what this was like, imagine Sid James and Brian Blessed trying to out laugh each other. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t pay a share of that sort of money lads’, I whinged. ‘Don’t be a tart, what’s wrong with you’, asked Ferg. ‘I’m not a tart, I just don’t have any money. I made that perfectly clear when you forced me to come on this fiasco and if you buy one single bottle of that stuff, I’m walking out.’ “Really?” asked Mark “Really!”, I replied in defiance. ‘In that case, my good man’, said Mark as he looked up at the helpless, confused waiter, ‘can we have TWO bottles of the Margaux please?’ Raucous laughter. I got up, while sort of explaining in a mutter that I had to do what I said I would do, and I stormed off through the door. The

door

that

is,

the

fekkin’

broom

cupboard!

Miraculously, no one had noticed the error it seemed, and I could hear them laughing helplessly and calling me all sorts. I looked around immediately for some way to get comfy as I suspected that I might have a long wait. However, within less than a minute a helpful waitress sidled up and explained apologetically to the table: ‘Monsieur, your friend, he is still in zee cupboard!’

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Chapter Fifteen Postscript or is it prologue? So, there you have it, and I have written my first book and because of my great mate Martyn who is a pretty good proof-reader (and is also a star and features in this book) you won’t find any spelling or grandma mistakes. The only one thing I am not sure about is whether he ever managed to get through the whole script and make sure I had spelt ‘Foreword’ correctly and consistently. For people like me, the other word ‘forward’ is a huge, hairy-arsed and hefty rugby player who loves charging into similar specimens and afterwards carouses a lot of beer while cuddling the same now showered and tidied up chunks of men. I am used to writing about that use of the word ‘forward’, and hence I had this preconception that forward was also the spelling of any written preamble to a book. By the way there is another type of rugby player called a ‘back’, sorry I know this isn’t wholly relevant or possibly the right time, but they are generally nimbler and swifter and have more interest in fashion, hair products and personal hygiene. They might be seen drinking a white wine spritzer or similar while trying to keep their distance from the noisy forwards and their boisterous, beer driven behaviour. I am noticing an outbreak of alliteration here. So, when I wrote the foreword as an introductory section to my book, I wrote it (proudly, as you will remember I had always wanted to have one of my own) as ‘Forward’. I have to say that it didn’t seem right at the time, but it wasn’t until I had typed it a few times that I thought I should google it. Up until then I had just been having a feeling of unease about its spelling, but I guessed it was due to the fact that I had never had to write the word before. I looked it up and there it was; that weird extra ‘e’ in the middle.

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In a very fleeting ‘Ah yes, that’s it’ moment, probably with no glasses on as usual, I saw my error and immediately set about adding the extra ‘e’ on the handful of pages that I had written by then. While doing this, I probably missed a few. More importantly, in my haste I had somehow failed to notice while googling all this, that the second half of the new word I had found was WORD. How did I not notice this? It’s so obvious, it’s a FORE WORD, a word at the fore. This brings me to Martyn Best, and he must despair with me sometimes. He is the magical proof-reader that I mentioned, and his assistance has been invaluable with loads of lucid advice and commentary and also that all important encouragement. I did think at one stage that it wasn’t worth completing the book but when he read the draft that was going to be sent around to the main stars, he gave me some inspiring words and said he loved it. Since then, he has been a great help putting the final touches to it as well as the occasional bike ride and more than occasional, socially distanced glass (glass, did I say bottle?) of wine. Oh, and those million steps. Thank you, Martyn. Anyway, Martyn proof-read it. He wittily remarked that he actually didn’t know there were that many ways of spelling foreword and it was while he was telling me that I realised how daft I had been. ‘It’s a …fore.. word’, said Martyn, ‘a word before’. Yes, the fog had cleared, and I imagined myself flitting through Google, seeing the extra ‘E’ and then changing (nearly all) the forwards to forewards, not knowing they should be forewords. Right, I am so glad that I cleared that up. Do you know, I would bet that there is at least still one of them misspelt in there somewhere but Martyn nearly always has some type of computer thingy to check things so he should have covered that possibility. He is very keyed up on all that stuff for a man of his age, very slightly older than me that is. He also suggested the extra chapter herein now being written, as I was going to leave it at: ‘Monsieur, your friend, he is still in zee cupboard’.

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It seemed a good last line, and I thought that if I didn’t use that, I’d just have to find another, which as it turns out I did. ‘No, you’ve got to have a last chapter,’ Martyn had admonished, ‘you need to sum things up, tie all the loose ends up and so on’. He was beginning to sound like my original publisher and I realised that if Martyn hadn’t told me this, then he, Bob the original one, probably would have done. So, what were the themes and messages? What did I write at the start in the foreword, forward, foreward when Bob had bullied me into planning ahead, after I thought that I had finished the bloody book! Well, I have talked in the book about a number of Liverpool businesspeople and characters, all of whom I am very proud to call my friends, and I sincerely hope I haven’t upset any of them in the process. I don’t believe I have because I came up with what I thought was a moment of genius and I sent them all an early draft to look through and censor, add to and edit. This has led to a bit more material which by implication they should be happy with as they largely created it. They are all in their latter years now (apart of course from Andy P) but I hope that, while they read this, they look back on what they have achieved with a sense of pride. One of my themes is how they have done business with a network of trusted colleagues and when they have shaken hands on something then that is it, sealed and guaranteed. I have found folk like that in my life eventually, but it took me a long time. I sort of ‘kissed a lot of frogs’ as they say. I know I have interrupted the stories and harped on about the dishonesty that I have encountered but my overall tone is meant be bullish and optimistic. I wanted to celebrate these guys and their era. Maybe I have just had a bad run and, if I had done things on my first gut instinct, I don’t think any of the things that happened to me would have come to fruition. Yes, I hope I have celebrated these men, their success and their way of doing it. They have generated so much business in their time, so much employment and so much fun. They have truly touched so many lives positively. Their businesses have

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given so much to the area and of course they and their businesses have given endlessly to charity as well. Their era is coming to an end as they retire but I hope it is not forgotten. Is it a bad world now? I don’t know? I hope not. Is the constant stream of attempted scams arriving at my computer daily indicative of a decaying morality in the world or is it just that the world wide web has made it easier for all the baddies in the world to get to everyone at the press of a button. Their target market is, after all, the whole world so maybe we get the feeling that everyone is after us as a result. Maybe the world is just smaller. The boys in this book did it right. They were honest with people and they generated a family feel in their business life. I wish them many happy years retired as a reward! While I am on the subjects of the book there are quite a few people who might not have made it into it but feel they maybe should and for that I genuinely apologise. In fact, one, my old mucker Vin Staniforth from my Ernst Young days, did finally become the very kind, and much put-upon illustrator and dotted throughout the book you will see amusing examples of his fine work. But really, I must stop soon. It was so hard to find the cut-off point, and I was in a rush at the end to get it out there and published so it could hopefully provide some funds for the charity and I could write my second and third books, which are busy fermenting in my head as I write. So yes, there will be another. And by the way I know I spelt grammar wrong somewhere - did you spot that? ‘This wallpaper is terrible - one of us will have to go’. Oscar Wilde’s alleged last words. And now mine. THE END

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Chapter Sixteen My final acknowledgments

Do you know that bit at the end of the film when the credits role, and you’re about to walk out, or turn the telly off – and then, boom, there’s a few extra hidden and secret scenes. Well – this is nothing like that! But it is a special little chapter tucked away at the very – honest – end of my first published book. It is true, and as you can now surely testify, that a book is never really finished – it just gets published – and so phew, it is. Before, I do leave you, I just have to offer some final thanks – and I’m sure you will all know who it’s to. Yes, that’s right – all those people who make everything worthwhile. My parents of course, Tony and Beth, who set me along on this crazy path, and many others who I have met along the way – most of you have already been mentioned, so don’t keep reading in further hope – and of course my one and only, Ali. She has shared in some of these escapades and has also had the wisdom to just let me get on with the vast majority of them, hoping – I hope – that I’ll return safely, and with most of what I departed with. Without her, I truly would not have been able to have enjoyed these adventures as much – and she has of course been with me on my greatest adventure. And, speaking of which, finally, finally, a nod to our dear cherubs, Wallace, Campbell, Annabelle, Maddy, Georgie and Toby. Please read this when you’re old enough, and when you are well past the age where you feel you need to judge your dear father. That my dear readers, is that.

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FUTURE PROJECTS OF THE AUTHOR

My good friends, Dave and Alistair toasting the success of my first book, Gentlemen, I give you … at one of the many launch events. They could easily be the subject of a truly fascinating book or research project maybe.

This was taken at the Cross Foxes, Trawsfynydd, North Wales – and is as fine a Welsh pub and hostelry as you could wish for.

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Finally, we would like to bring to your attention that Chris is hoping to publish his second book later this year. Watch out for “Three Men and a Stoat” in 2022.

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Gentlemen, I give you ...

Articles inside

CHAPTER SIXTEEN MY FINAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PRESIDENTS

CHAPTER FIFTEEN POSTSCRIPT (SPELT RIGHT

CHAPTER TWELVE RICHARD KIRK

CHAPTER THIRTEEN STEPHEN LAING AND OTHER ACCOUNTANTS

CHAPTER NINE JOHNNY PRESTT

CHAPTER ELEVEN NIGEL AND JEREMY WOODWARD

CHAPTER TEN RAY BAILEY

CHAPTER EIGHT JIM DAVIES

CHAPTER SEVEN MALCOLM WALKER

CHAPTER SIX ANDY PRITCHARD

CHAPTER FIVE PETER BULLIVANT

CHAPTER FOUR GEOFF MASON AND HIS SONS

CHAPTER THREE BARRY OWEN

CHAPTER TWO A ROOM FULL OF LEGENDS

MY NAME’5 DODDIE FOUNDATION

THE ACTUAL FOREWORD BY MARTYN BEST

CHAPTER ONE DINNER NEAR BRIGANDS

FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR

A FAMOUS FORWARD’S FOREWORD BY ROB WAINWRIGHT