CHAPTER THIRTEEN STEPHEN LAING AND OTHER ACCOUNTANTS

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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