CHAPTER ELEVEN NIGEL AND JEREMY WOODWARD

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.

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,

Nigel & Peter, after a funny tale.

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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 123

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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