I went up to University College London to read Economics. Big disappointment! The degree course was much about every subject, but Economics; London an inhospitable place for a country bumpkin and academe not really my world. I graduated with a modest 2ii – more than I merited!
I worked as a builder’s labourer to get fit for National Service which I opted not to evade as I was sure the Cold War would get Hot and, if I had to fight, I wished to know how. I was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and posted to my regiment on 24 hour standby to go anywhere there might be a scrap. I served in Libya, Kuwait and Aden (very nasty and I found out how scared you can be in enemy’s gunsights.) I found Army values still rooted in the days of Empire: as the responsible office for packing the Regiment’s fighting kit, I had to unpack and leave some of it out to accommodate the Officers’ Mess silver “In case we have a Mess Dinner”! But Sir, I thought we are going out to fight a war. Unbelievable!
Then I Joined Ford as a Financial Graduate in April 1962. I soon gave up Finance for Manufacturing, Product Planning and then Human Resources. My planned two years with Ford ended up as eighteen having had thirteen jobs. I finished as Employee Affairs Director, Ford of Europe. To rise any further I would have had to relocate to the USA so I joined Courage for twice the money and all the outrageous benefits the company afforded its Directors.
There followed an exciting six years helping my Chairman replace a Board of “Gentlemen” with professional managers from Unilever, Mars, Procter & Gamble and the like. This enabled a turn-round from a mere £27m profit in 1979 to £137m in 1986 and led to a huge take-over battle with Hanson Trust in which we came second. But hey-ho, the stock options paid off big time and with a two year contract no great need to work.
After three or four months of summer break with my sons home from school I got fed up with no corporate activity and accepted a good offer from Ernest Saunders, then Chief Executive of Guinness. My wife, with great prescience, said “Why would you work for that man, he is clearly dishonest?” Well I joined on 1st October 1986 and on 3rd December Department of Trade and Industry inspectors walked in and locked up every executive’s desk. Thus began the affair that ended with Saunders, Gerald Ronson and others in the chokey for ramping up the share price in the takeover of The Distillers Company. I was NOT involved because at the time I was busy fighting off Hanson.
Following this debacle I was appointed Managing Director of a group of Guinness companies (Martins, Cranks, Hediard, Champneys, Gleneagles inter alia).
In 1964 I married Elisabeth who, without much of a break from her General Practitioner work and a mostly absent husband, raised our two fine sons.
Outside the day job I served for several years as a non-executive director of Basildon Hospital Trust. Since retirement I have been variously Director of Chelmsford Counselling Foundation; Chairman, Essex Young Enterprise and Chaired, for Chelmsford Council, the working group to formulate the Plan (now largely executed) to revitalise Chelmsford’s West End.
In 2009 Elisabeth and I decided to downsize and move to Yorkshire, sadly leaving behind our 100+ acre Ancient Wood in Essex which we had spent ten years restoring. We now enjoy an active life in our village and have great contact with our two sons and four grandchildren.
18th October, 2016
The Judge, the felon and the Court Usher – Prefects Court 1956 at the Christmas Dinner 2013
Thompson, Wood-Kneller and Smale nearly 60 years afterwards!