Tonight’s the night everybody starts making promises they can’t hope to keep. Big Al – once again – will threaten the UK pub sector by vowing to give up drinking; the gym will be full of fat people next week vowing to make the next Olympics and politicians all over the country will promise you anything you want for a tick in their box next May.
But if you really think things are bad and need hope for better days then read how one young lad – me – went from being described at school as “the most unemployable teenager ever” to respectability and a company Ford Escort.
Happy New Year to you all.
The ever idle Idle Lord.
A Bad Day For A Lie In
“Bollocks!”
There really was no other word for it as it dawned on me that, on what was probably the most important day of my short and, until that point, utterly meaningless existence, I had cocked up yet again.
At an age when most of my peer group were starting families I was, as yet, in no gainful employment save for my job as a Sunday paper boy with Mr Patel who appeared not to have any long term career progression planned for me.
As there was no evidence of any company pension plan, things were beginning to look a bit bleak. It was the summer of discontent – 1985 – and time to get a job.
Most of my school mates had abandoned me as I sought the work-shy route of the time known as the Sixth Form. Two years of A-levels – where the only things I really got better at were darts, stealing coffee and indoor cricket – had flown by.
The Day of Reckoning
By the age of 22, now clutching a meaningless degree, my life experiences amounted to a grim Yorkshire town and a week in Torremolinos with my best mate; the CV was not looking attractive.
So on a hot mid-summers day I prepared to be interviewed by a company I had never heard of, working in an industry I knew nothing about. It was now or never, my opportunity to climb a rung onto the ladder of life.
Once again I had prepared in supreme fashion and was about to do what would sustain me many times in future life; wing it.
Amazingly, I already had the offer of a job from a company called Avco Trust that flogged personal loans to people that could not afford them, and then hunted them down like bloodied foxes if they could not pay.
The interview had not filled me with great hope that I was joining something worthwhile. The office carpet looked as badly worn down as the office girls and the branch manager barely appeared older than me.
G’Day Richie!
I had one more interview before I gave up and went back to watching the cricket all summer back in the glory days of the 1980s when the BBC had the laconic Peter West and the incomparable Richie Benaud.
It was a time when dutiful mothers brought tea and sandwiches to lazy sons all day, protected from the harmful rays of the sun by the dusty venetian blinds – a paradise lost.
My preparation had been ruined by England batting the previous day, probably trying to stave off yet another humiliating defeat, resulting in me getting the time of the interview completely wrong.
I was late by an hour at best not that I could tell from the clock in my 1969 Mini Clubman as there wasn’t one.
It was then I had my eureka moment that would end with an offer of employment from Mercantile Credit Company Ltd – a subsidiary of Barclays Bank plc – as a Trainee Account Executive although to do what I had no idea.
Desperate to rescue the situation I found a phone box – these were the PN Years (pre-Nokia) – and frantically phoned the Bradford office.
On a Wing and a Prayer
The story I blatantly fabricated was that I had stopped to help an old lady with a puncture who was also dying and had minutes to live. This was total fantasy because to this day I don’t know how to change a wheel.
To appear authentic, I smudged my hands on the rims of my front wheels to smear them with dirt displaying yet more signs of idiocy completely forgetting that I had been driving and they were red hot.
It was a close call between the Burns Unit at the nearby Bradford Royal Infirmary and my interview. Surely things could only get better?
Approximately an hour late I parked up outside a row of Georgian terraces converted into office buildings that would have been smart homes in their heyday but by 1985 Bradford’s heyday had long since passed.
Resisting any desire to tweak my polyester tie and cover it in brake oil I told myself it was now or never.
Derek’s Discount Centre
For my interview I had chosen my best suit – in fact my only suit – a woollen horror purchased from Derek’s Discount Centre located on the aptly named Cheapside in Bradford centre.
Derek had never threatened Savile Row but he was cheap. However, every time I wore his suit I itched like I had an overdose of the clap. I made a mental note to resist scratching my nuts as I sat in reception.
Mercantile was actually acquired by Barclays Bank in the 1960s. Ironically, Barclays along with the other major banks at the time had taken advantage of the credit crunch of the 1960s to acquire previously independent finance houses.
It operated largely as a provider of car finance through motor dealers although it dabbled in many other markets with varying levels of catastrophe and eye watering losses.
Come Into My Office Son
Eventually I was shown up to the Branch Manager’s office, having been allowed to wash the oil and grime away as best I could under the suspicious glances of the office girls.
I knew two of the girls already. I had been at the same primary school as Sue, who I remembered had seemed to like slapping my legs especially on bitterly cold days; she was not to be messed with.
I also knew Jayne from the local pub, the Five Lane Ends, where I had worked part-time. At the time she had a horrendous bubble perm like the footballer Kevin Keegan used to sport. Now was not the time to remind her of bad hair days.
However, familiarity certainly helped relax me, although if there had been a straw poll there and then as to the authenticity of my excuse for being late, I would have been two votes down and had my legs slapped again.
As I opened the door, sat there in a cloud of cigar smoke was a man that I was to respect almost immediately and probably more than any other manager I met during the following twenty five years.
Phil Terry was a man the word “gentleman” was made for. Ex-RAF, he exuded calm and commanded respect with an air of firm, but always fair, authority.
He only ever got rattled if he looked like missing his lunchtime routine of a swim at nearby Eccleshill baths, a sandwich from Chubbs, a Hamlet cigar and the Yorkshire Post.
The interview was more like a chat with your favourite uncle and I came away sure that I wanted to work there even though I still was pretty clueless as to what MCC actually did.
Shortly after an offer of employment – a starting salary of £5,806 and a company car – the Mini was staring down the barrel at the knackers’ yard. Time to rescue the Tears for Fears tape; everybody wants to rule the world and I was just about to have my shot.
Confident in my ability to screw up, even at this late hour, I decided not to tell my parents. And so for three days I sloped out to the office, knackers on fire from Derek’s dodgy wool suit and got into company car parked around the corner from my parents’ house.
Eventually, on the Wednesday evening, I confessed all. Unsurprisingly, my dad seemed sceptical that MCC and I had a future given my
hardly sparkling employment record to date. He had a point.
Pat says
All the Very Best for the New Year Steve !!