CHAPTER TWELVE RICHARD KIRK

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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