CHAPTER TWO A ROOM FULL OF LEGENDS

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’.

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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 22

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:

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‘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?

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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.

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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.”

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