Part One – Early Days
1 – All Or Nothin’ At All
“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, very badly, aged twenty two. At an age when most of my peer group were settling down with wives and starting families I was as yet in no gainful employment save for the odd part time job as a Sunday paper boy with Mr Patel. As Mr Patel appeared not to have any long term career progression planned for me and there was no evidence of any company pension plan, things were beginning to look a bit bleak. It was the summer of 1985 and there was no escaping the new brutal reality. It was time to get a job.
Most of my school mates had been working for the last decade at least and had abandoned me as I sought the work-shy route of the time known as the Sixth Form. I comforted myself in that whilst they now all earned a bob or two and paid some “jock” money, they were probably wasting their new found wealth on Gary Numan records – something I could not do as I could neither stand the miserable, face-painted twat nor afford anything better than Mr Patel’s 45p ex-jukebox singles. To my eternal credit I resisted the opportunity to pilfer the odd one by slipping it into the News of the World and inflicting further shame on my mother…she had, after all, suffered enough.
Two years of A levels, where the only thing I really got better at was darts, stealing coffee and indoor cricket had flown by. We played out these “test matches” in the common room – oblivious to those few idealists attempting to study – with the lethal table football ball, a metal pole we stole from the cloakrooms and no flashy body armour; with future MCC member Mark Boocock bowling fearsome bouncers this was pretty dangerous.
When the holiday camp eventually came to an end I had followed this by a “year out” which was a neat term for unemployment and dossing around with the Pickles twins although they call it a GAP year these days. And still work was evaded by a further three years out courtesy of a degree in Economics & Business Administration at Trinity & All Saints College on the outskirts of Leeds. And so by the age of 22 my life experiences amounted to two grim Yorkshire towns 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, knowing that 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. In truth I already had the offer of a job from a US company called Avco Trust that flogged personal loans to people that could not afford them, and then flogged them if they could not pay. The word “trust” was to reoccur as a common mantra over the many years that followed and I eventually believed it to be another variation on the oft used term “bollocks”.
The interview with Avco hadn’t 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, offering me a chance to follow in his footsteps after a probationary three-month period where, presumably, I would be tested on flogging eye watering loans and insurance plans to anybody looking for a shelter from the street. Whilst I had yet to develop a life plan this definitely wasn’t it.
Still, they had, unbelievably, offered me a job, leaving only one more prospective employer before I gave up and went back to watching the cricket all summer. This was back in the glory days of the 1980s when the BBC through the laconic Peter West and incomparable Richie Benaud ruled supreme and mothers brought tea and sandwiches to lazy sons all day, protected from the harmful rays of the sun by the dusty venetian blinds. No need for Ray Bans or sun block in those days.
Unbelievably, my total lack of preparation, which I put down to the probability that England must have been batting the previous day probably trying to stave off yet another humiliating defeat, resulted in me getting the time of the interview completely wrong. Had Boycott been batting and induced another mid-afternoon coma? 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. And then I had my eureka moment that would end with an offer of employment from Mercantile Credit Company Ltd, subsidiary of Barclays Bank plc as a Trainee Account executive; I remained largely clueless for at least the next two years as to the role I had chosen and had I known I was going to be there twenty five years maybe I would have chilled out a bit.
Desperate to rescue the situation I found a phone box as these were the PN Years (pre-Nokia) and frantically phoned the Bradford office of Mercantile. The story I blatantly fabricated went 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 largely because to this day I don’t know how to change a wheel but it seemed to fool the office girl as I advised that I would be a bit late for my interview. To appear authentic I then decided to smudge my hands on the rims of my front wheels to smear them with dirt displaying yet more signs of idiocy and completely forgetting that I had been driving and they were red hot. Anybody who ever owned a British Leyland Mini will remember that the brakes were at best an exercise in hope and sometimes futility. 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 8 Eldon Place, close to the centre of Bradford, on 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 took a final look and told myself it was now or…well the thought was not worth considering.
I had actually held down a job on a part-time basis – approximately ten hours a week at a local night club for the last two years – whilst pretending to study for my degree knowing that they would simply give me one just to leave college and become a different form of burden on the state. As much as I loved working at “Silks” it was never a long-term bet, just as well as in later years it turned into a gay bar before eventually shutting – like the rest ofBradford’s night life – for good.
For my interview I had chosen my best suit – in fact my only suit – a woollen, cobalt blue, single-breasted horror purchased from Derek’s Discount Centre located on the aptly named Cheapside in Bradford centre. Now Derek had never threatened Saville Row but he was cheap and knew where not to touch whilst fitting me up – in more ways than one –- although the same could not have been said for the suits he sold because 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. At last I was in the Bradford offices of Mercantile Credit Co Ltd.
Had I done any research I would have known that Mercantile was actually owned by Barclays Bank dating back to the 1960s, although in those early working days it always seemed to me that the bank was in denial vis-à-vis its ownership of this enfant terrible. 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 such as Mercantile to give them access to the growing consumer finance markets. The wheel, as they say, rarely gets reinvented and merely rolls around full circle.
To say there was a culture clash was putting it mildly. Mercantile operated as a provider of car finance through motor dealers largely to the man in the street, although it dabbled over the years in many other markets such as home improvements ironically generally through “partners” that did the clear opposite. I was amazed at how many different markets the powers that be from time to time were convinced they could conquer before eventually coming full circle and returning to basics; the motor trade though, come hell or high water, was our heartland.
Basically business came from the motor trade who used Mercantile and others such as Lombard North Central (Nat West); Lloyds Bowmaker, Forward Trust (Midland in those days now HSBC and another dubious use of the word Trust); and United Dominions Trust aka UDT (Trustee Savings Bank…what did I tell you…long since submerged into the Lloyds Banking Group). And therein lies the central problem in that given the main provider of business was an industry with, shall I say, its fair share of shady characters the relationship between risk and reward was always an uneasy one. Had we chosen the Mafia as business partners it would have been hard to tell the difference. Although it was only some twenty five years ago at that time the cowboys had yet to be run out of town.
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. Fortunately, 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 and could do so as she was bigger than me…as almost everybody was. She later married one of my best school mates, Ernie, nicknamed after the Benny Hill character in the tragic song about a milkman. Sadly, as in the song, it all ended badly for Ernie and Sue as their marriage collapsed. I have no idea what happened to the “fastest milk cart in the west”. Very early on I learnt that offices were a hotbed of sexual tension and many years later Sue remarried to yet another MCC man and they remain happily married.
I also knew Jayne from the local pub, the Five Lane Ends, where I had “worked” before joining Silks and where she used to come in permanently wearing a blue anorak. I think she actually slept in the anorak and at the time as she was sporting a bubble perm that I’ve ribbed her about ever since as it was similar to one of those bubble perms that Eighties footballers like Kevin Keegan used to sport. Her fiancé at the time was a similarly curly haired lad called Matt who is now completely bald so maybe all that perm solution was never a good idea or maybe that’s what going out with Jayne did to men as she never lost her hair. 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 although he had never even flown a paper plane, 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 followed by a sandwich and a Hamlet cigar. In truth the office was run one floor below by Hazel – more later – as was common in those days. Phil simply had to roll up, say “hello”, look half interested in the morning post and then disappear to the sanctity of his office. There he was safe in the knowledge that he would be free, at least until the evening, from his fearsome wife, Vina who always gave a very passable impression of Cruella de Ville on her visits to the office, usually accompanied by two miniature dogs, floating on a bed of dry ice. If they shook fear into Phil, those visits hardly perked up the rest of us.
I cannot remember anything of the interview save for that it 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 dropped through the door and the big time had arrived. A starting salary of £5,806 and a company car…a Ford Escort…the Mini was staring down the barrel at the knackers’ yard, furry steering wheel cover et al. 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 the strange, unaccounted for Peugeot – the Escort was on order – parked around the corner from my parents’ house. I weaved a web of lies claiming I was going for interviews desperate to avoid the standard “how did it go / what do you do” questions the like of which I would be unable to answer for some years yet. Eventually, on the Wednesday evening, I confessed all and, unsurprisingly, my dad seemed sceptical that MCC and I had a future. He had a point; after all I had flunked a free grammar school, ditched a perfectly good job at the Prudential and then bummed around at college for three years. For once I would prove him wrong…just.
2 – Queen Of The Supermarket
There was really only one person who knew how everything worked at the Bradford office of MCC and indeed who everybody turned to especially Phil. Hazel Horn ran the show and had done so for longer than most could remember prompting me in one mad moment of irreverence to suggest she actually built the office. With an icy cool that could stop you in your tracks she did so with no bother and I knew my place from thereon; before you even thought you might start to amount to something you had to prove yourself to Hazel. A tall, elegant, impeccably dressed lady that in her day would have turned many heads, she handled the most befuddled customers at the counter and the most irate of motor dealers over the phone, with the same almost regal aplomb. And she handled Phil like a child’s mother…not that he minded at all…we all knew who was really Boss at8 Eldon Place.
I remember nervously being introduced on my first day to my fellow sales team not knowing what to expect and, as reflecting life, what I got was a mixed bag indeed. Senior Account Representative was Bernard Rooney, in his mid forties then and described warily to me by a colleague as “sharper than a cracked piss pot” although I always found “Bernie” warm, patient and a great help to this young pup in his charge. He was both generous in his advice and also protective when, inevitably, I screwed up. A diminutive figure, almost Napoleonic in looks, there was no crisis that Bernie could not solve with some time out and a quiet fag in the yard at the back of the offices. He was good, indeed very good and seemingly born into selling. The motor trade lads loved him as he was as close to one of them that he could possibly be and he got the job done.
Ian Clark was the polar opposite, obsessive about his mid-twenties looks with perma-tan, huge gym conditioned frame and as equally obsessive about making a name for himself which he did by creating his own little empire developing a significant corporate customer base. This was very different from our core business – which basically was bending over for the motor trade – and was arguably harder as it depended on a direct sell to the business market financing a wider range of assets than cars.
At that time the business finance division of MCC was a separate entity but there was nothing to stop guys like Ian infiltrating the marketplace at the lower end although Ian must have missed that bit in the training manual as he went everywhere and anywhere. It may have been a scattergun approach but it sorted the players from the pretenders and the week that I joined Ian hopped across the great divide…Bradford to Leeds…and joined Barclays Mercantile Business Finance (BMBF) to operate officially in the space he was already in. A pattern that was set to repeat itself four short years on had been established.
In a very short week I leant a lot from Clarky, the most valuable lesson being that nobody ever died due to cold calling. Over the years the fear I saw in the eyes of a multitude of colleagues was incredible. I would always much rather chance a “no” from a business call than some bit of hot stuff in a night club. At least I could blame Derek’s Discount Centre in part for any failure with women as I was still shopping with old Dodgy Derek so pulling anything decent whilst continually scratching downstairs was not going to happen. Clarky had a very simple process that seemed to elude all the failed salesmen and women who reinvented themselves as training gurus over the years and one you simply could not better. Pick up phone…dial…talk. Easy! Who needed a training manual? Senior management never quite understood this. As with most things in life why complicate things? On the plus side if it went well you stood the chance of winning some business and on the flip side that was one less call to make before hitting the gym.
The final member of the team was a character in his own right, inimitable and certainly one of the tightest men ever to walk the planet. “Old Lad”, named so as he addressed most people in this fashion, was about the same age as Clarky and the consummate professional: smartly dressed, fastidious and dedicated he knew his daily bank balance to the waking minute years before internet banking came along. Old Lad was also another fitness freak preferring running the streets to Clarky’s iron pumping mainly. Rather bizarrely this came in very useful a few years later with a slightly dubious repossession of a white van – not technically within the spirit, shall we say, of the prevailing 1964 Consumer Credit Act at the time.
Old Lad’s reputation for splitting a penny in two was well earned but perhaps best evidenced by the following tale. For lunch we would take turns in trekking the mile or so to a glorious sandwich shop at the bottom of Oak Lane opposite the magnificent Lister Park in Bradford. Chubbs was run by John and Barbara Barraclough and served an array of pleasures no better than the weirdly named Elephant’s Foot, a creation of pastry, cream and jam that made working the afternoon shift an impossible task; if a trend was established the seeds were sown then. The sandwiches were served up either in tea-cakes or the wonderful, sleep-inducing flat-cakes that you simply dare not eat in the car for fear of contents flying everywhere as you grappled with the saucer like feast. Many a shirt and tie combo went into the bin, splattered by escaping beetroot and salad cream courtesy of Chubbs.
Service at Chubbs was relentlessly one-paced and queues often snaked out of the door regardless of the weather. Many friendships were forged in those queues as the pressures of the working day were dismissed for a while. John and Barbara remained oblivious and only the uninitiated left the queue, the rest of us enjoying the slow pace and friendly warmth of the banter that bounced around the shop. There were no Blackberrys, iPads and the rest to disturb the gentle peace and I wonder if we will ever discover anything like Chubbs again? Anyway, it must have been Andrew’s turn and I remember it was a Friday. Back he came with the usual assortment of goodies and work promptly ground to a halt as we tucked in. Like a rabid debt collector he sought out everybody that owed him for their lunch and, almost begrudgingly handed back any change owed.
Monday morning came and before the coffee was poured there was a tap on my shoulder: “Now then Old Lad, have you got that five pence you owe me from Friday?” he said oblivious to the scale of the debt and without so much as a “good morning Old Lad”. Shameless – and from that day the legend was set in stone and nobody ever short-changed Old Lad. And so, after a brief introduction to the Bradford sales team of Mercantile Credit – this was long before they started to force the front office staff into “selling” – I was left in the rear office one bright and sunny October morning alone to scratch my nuts in peace and wade through a pile of training manuals that alluded, by their sheer size alone, to the potential of having a career ahead of me. A cup of tea, my very first desk – till Bernie got back at least – and phone made me feel at last like Captain Furillo from Hill Street Blues…if only Counsellor Joyce Davenport would pop in and not Jayne in that bloody blue anorak.
The honeymoon period could not last and, shortly after lunch, I was effectively institutionalised and placed in the “care” of Hazel for my initiation proper. She fixed those steely blue eyes on me, smiled a knowing smile like the hunter does towards its trapped prey and from that moment on I knew there was nothing I could get past this woman. I wanted my mum! During a bewildering afternoon it soon became clear that life in MCC was a series of acronyms or abbreviations and if Hazel had spent that first afternoon speaking Urdu I may have understood just as little. For example I had the following to contend with:
PERLO – personal loan
HP – Hire Purchase aka Chukky, Strap, Never-Never
NAXOS– cheap, shit computer system that never worked
To this day I remain grateful to Hazel for many things, not least that on the day I left Bradford office some four years later as she gracefully ignored my request to spend the rest of our lives together prompted as I was by the contents of a very liquid lunch. As I staggered across the office, having returned from another session at our unofficial sub-branch, The Fighting Cock Pub in Bradford, dragging a phone wrapped around my ankle and with Jayne trying not to wet herself on the spot, Hazel remained cool to the very last although allowing me to fall down the flight of steps may have saved Barclays Bank plc a small fortune over the coming years.
For all the things that Hazel taught me perhaps the most long lasting was sorting out my itching problem initiating one of the longest relationships of my life and one that continues to this very day. She introduced me to Raymond Town Menswear, at that time halfway up Manchester Road on one of the many routes out of Bradford; I can honestly say it would have been cheaper to breed three kids, get divorced twice and send them to Oxford University than begin shopping at “Towny’s” all those years ago.
Hazel’s brother in law, John, still runs the shop with his son Richard and having escaped Manchester Road for provincial Saltaire they continue to fleece me regularly. Indeed, later in my business life two very tough and successful businessmen and customers alike both confessed over a drink that, whilst having dealt with the hardest negotiators respectively in retail and printing, they accept they are putty in the hands of John and Richard each time they visit the shop. Adrian Brown, Managing Director of Olympus Labels, is used to operating in a cut-throat marketplace but as he said to me “I go in determined to buy a shirt and in no time I’m calling the missus to bring down a suitcase! I’ve no idea how they do it and I shit myself going in for a coffee!” Similarly, there are not many more tougher (nor more supportive to my “causes” over the years) than Glyn Rogan of Advanced Processing but he confessed to being putty once in the shop.
Try it if you dare and see if you can avoid going in for a shirt and not coming out with a suit, several pairs of trousers and a new pair of shoes. It was also a great meeting place and, although you had to beg for a coffee at times or buy at least half a dozen shirts, I wiled away many an afternoon with a fellow “rep” from rivals Lloyds. If Hazel gave me many things I have to say that the introduction to John and Richard was as good as anything, not that it did anything for my dress sense other than stop the itching.
Despite my intense study of the Life as Assisted by Hazel manual, it took me at least a year and a bit more to really feel I belonged both in the working world and at MCC. At twenty two I had been in Never Never Land for far too long and the real world had quite a nip to it that not even Derek’s suit could protect me from. There were many times I could have simply walked away but in Hazel there was always a helping hand and by then I was addicted to Raymond Town; I could never support that growing habit from a paper round.
So here I was, a Trainee Account Executive at Mercantile Credit Co Ltd with a national network of 128 branches across the country and probably one of the strongest brands in retail motor finance. Life, however, was changing fast and although the next four years were definitely the best I ever had, certainly the most enjoyable in my working life, by the time I was ready to move on the network had been reduced to 20 branches and two years later the business and its six remaining branches would be sold to new kid on the block, GE Capital. In between there were some great times.
3 – The New Timer
Most large organisations spend fortunes on training and development but in all the years and numerous training courses I was sent on I cannot remember many where I actually came away feeling I had learnt much or done anything other than get pissed most nights to alleviate the oncoming boredom of the next day. Indeed, after a couple of early courses I came back bitterly disappointed with the content and structure feeling that these were simply a complete waste of time. When I made this point to Phil under the guise of our “one to one” review sessions – somebody always wanted a feedback form filled in although I doubt whether they ever really read them – he just leaned back in his chair, lit another Hamlet and simply smiled whispering “It’s just a game, Steve”. The sub-text being “get out, let me finish my flat cake and be grateful somebody is paying you a salary at long last you lucky boy.”
The very early courses we were sent on were named almost like some Russian secret coding as NR1 or NR2 (NR being New Recruit) and staged at a grand old country house called Appletons, close to Slough which was actually a bigger dump than Bradford, although I am sure my home town has surpassed it by now. The most obvious reasons for locating us all in the middle of nowhere were factors striking a common theme that governed the future years to come with Barclays. Basically it was cheap because we owned it and stuck in the middle of nowhere to ensure we couldn’t get up to much. This was suburbia in retreat and about the only thing of note about the area was that Frank Bough, the BBC presenter who in later years was revealed to have rather interesting “hobbies” (what will we do without the News of the World?), was a local, often being spotted being driven in his distinctive Rolls Royce.
Stuck in the countryside with only a regal wave from Frank Bough to look forward we were saved by Doreen, the canteen lady at Appletons who produced the most wonderful grub; I blame her for the obvious tail off in my attention span normally an hour before lunch as the kitchen smells came wafting through, teasing us with the pleasures about to be sampled. Afternoons were a complete waste of time as we lent back in unison to quietly fart, allow stomachs to rumble and slowly doze off comforted by some glorious pudding. Meanwhile somebody from Training Department would be imploring us to spot the “buying signals”, know when to “close the deal” and “overcome those objections” . In all my years of selling nobody really explained this notion of the “buying signal”. Did a light bulb suddenly appear over somebody’s head like the Ocean Finance advert – I watch too much Sky TV – if they had a buying signal? A man would have gone insane at Appletons without Doreen.
Steeped in tradition, Appletons had a rich history to it as part of MCC, long before Barclays acquired the business. Sadly I understand that many years ago it was flattened and the grounds redeveloped at the height of the property boom. With it went the glorious old house, the swimming pool – they always sent us there in November – and the mini-golf pitch and putt course we all loved, if only to see if we could drive the house cutting out a dog leg or two and the car -park. One or two company cars developed strange post-Appletons dents over the years and unexplainable as these were I told Phil that the conkers were especially heavy down South. It was after all “only a game”.
I wonder what became of the numerous photo albums of group after group of new and not so new recruits who all began at Appletons with a photo on the terrace outside the training rooms to be placed into the annals of the rich and now terminated history of MCC. Book after book traced the thousands of people who had passed through Appletons and trawling through these looking for early shots of the likes of Phil, Hazel and Bernie was often the bright spot of the day. Even better the wondrous variations of male and female fashions over the decades. Somewhere in those albums wherever they are a fresh faced kid is pictured trying not to grimace as he fights the urge to scratch away.
It was here that I first met a colleague I will refer to, with a certain irony, as “Happy”, so named for all the wrong reasons and definitely not for spreading oceans of joy wherever he went over the next twenty five years. Our paths became intertwined for the next twenty five years no matter how hard we both sought to avoid the other and we were never destined to be great mates, that bit was certain. We got off to a bad start when Bernie and I arrived to pick him up one Sunday afternoon for another jaunt down to Appletons to find he had already left believing that we had purposefully set off without him to make him late and threaten his plan to become part of the Establishment. As I said earlier everybody wants to rule the world but not so Bernie and me; you simply never rushed Bernie. When we finally arrived down South it was clear that Bernie and I were not going to be sharing many drinks with Happy who was attached to the Leeds office that was also considered more of an enemy than the rival banks.
Needless to say the days were long and there’s only so many times you can stare at the same tree hoping that it might do something unexpected like decide to crash into the training room, take out the course tutor and Happy at the same time, leaving the rest of us free to go to the pub. To alleviate the boredom we spent each evening at a local pub and engaged in a very competitive series of challenges culminating in races across the road – naked – around a tree and back again. Hangovers the following day were punctuated by picking tarmac and dirt from the soles of our feet. The fact that Happy declined to join in our “activities” suggested either we may not be kindred spirits or that he was crap at naked sprinting.
There was one golden rule understood by all on a training course. No matter how hard you had partied the night before, it was simply unacceptable not to make the classroom the next day. Famously, there was a great tale about Bernie who – technically – did not breach this rule but came so, so close. Bernie was not a big drinker at all but must have had a very big night because the following morning he was in no state at all. So his colleagues, observing tradition, ensured his attendance if not entirely in class by hauling him in, fully suited having dressed him as he lay unconscious on his hotel bed and transferred him on to one of the sofas outside the classroom. And there he slept all day, oblivious to coffee and tea breaks and the comings and goings. Apparently the tutor did not make an issue of this simply because at least he had got there. Marvellous stuff and he probably did not miss much more than the rest of us who were equally docile the other side of the classroom door.
Very early on I was not shy of expressing my dismay at what we were subjected to on training courses – if it was crap it was crap although there was never a box to tick on the endless feedback forms – but sadly all that does in the large company environment is mark you out as a potential trouble maker. There was and remains a lot of nonsense about open and honest communication in large companies and it is complete bollocks. Speaking your mind is simply not the done thing. Head down, nod when told and keep picking up the pay cheque. Eventually, if I could not avoid going on the course – the same applied to annual conferences and the endless, inane team building days – I had to console myself that at least I was being fed and paid to effectively sleep all day.
Without doubt the best courses I went on were provided by occasional external providers largely because they were not run by people who had been shunted into the role simply because they were rubbish at everything else. These were few and far between though. The best training in any sales environment though is on the job learning by your cock-ups, modest early successes and from the people you work with and for. No amount of useless role-playing orchestrated by trainers who could not flog a Big Mac to a starving man will ever prepare you for the real world.
The very last course I was ever sent on ended with an overly made up tutor (who revelled in telling us what she earned from peddling the tripe she was wasting my life with that Monday morning) telling me to “F**k off!”. I had simply refused to engage in yet another pointless role-play – how original from such a “premium” operator – offering her the advice that this was a complete waste of time after almost twenty five years on the job. It didn’t help matters that following her outburst I suggested that had I been earning as much as she was I would make sure I had a better command of the English language. I think that was the last course I was sent on but at least the hotel was half decent for a change.
And so we had the theory and the practice. Nothing in any training manual could have prepared me for the motor trade but in Bernie I had a skilled and respected operator and was indebted to him for those early days. Otherwise the motor trade would have shredded me to pieces. The new guy in the office always got what we termed as the “Sticks Run” which was a fortnightly trek across the moors from Bradford into the outskirts of East Lancashire with the first call at a Vauxhall dealer called Holden & Hartley, in a grim old mill town called Colne.
This was all down to the insistence of the Sales Manager, a prickly character called Mike that he deal only with Bradford and not nearby Preston office. We simply assumed he was a Burnley supporter and therefore hated all things Preston which is a bit like Bradford and Leeds. The fact that we hardly got any business anyway did not seem to matter and, besides, the trips over the moors via Haworth Moor were a delight in those days, before mobile phones savaged a travelling man’s peace and quiet. Early mornings with Terry Wogan never got any better.
The Sticks Run then detoured further out a la the Paris-Dakar rally and headed to Settle, a small town on the outskirts of the Yorkshire Dales, at a Land Rover/Rover dealer called Ribblesdale Motors where time really had stood still. A gentle giant of a man called Roy Melsome was Managing Director here and again we got bugger all business. One day I was sat opposite Roy extolling the benefits of our products and services as he casually assaulted his bacon and egg triple whopper when there was a sudden mighty roar. It sounded like we were being bombed although even now I doubt if Settle is high on the Al Qaeda target list and instinctively I dived under the table. A few seconds later I peeked out, adjusted my light grey, double-breasted, woollen overcoat – another stellar purchase from Dodgy Derek – to peer up at Roy’s disbelieving eyes. Clearly these townies weren’t use to the roar of the odd RAF jet. I’m not sure I ever established credibility again after mopping up the puddle.
The final leg of the run was homeward bound with a drop in at the least productive of all if you could separate the three calls to a Citroen dealership that I simply had to visit as we held the Citroen Credit trademark. This was my favourite of the three, not least because the two brothers that ran it did so in total fear of their father who was still making daily visits at the age of 120 scaring them witless and threatening the sack to his own kids if the sales figures were crap which they invariably were. Keeping the peace amongst the daily bickering was the sales manager John, not that he had anybody to manage unless you counted the dealership cat.
John was a really nice guy though, simply trying to earn a wage and probably grateful that in all the years I visited we never tried to discuss motor finance and insurance products that nobody ever wanted, preferring to muse on life itself especially in the winter months as he treated me to a warming soup as a starter given that Chubbs was now within striking distance. So this fortnightly run took on the feel of a comfort blanket really and for almost two years I did the circular route, pumped out some carbon and did sod all business…not that anybody ever seemed bothered least of all Phil.
In those early days I was also given other such personal finance hot-spots such as Ilkley and Otley, affluent towns notable for a “greying” market and a population not in dire need of a bit of chukky. On the outskirts of Ilkley was Cara-Cars a caravan dealership where we were “preferred” provider unless the sales lads could get more golf balls from the Lombard Rep. Technically, we had first shout because we operated a stocking plan which in those days was quite common and operated as a loosely, very loosely controlled overdraft which was secured on stock. Interest was charged like an overdraft and discounted depending on the amount of business we generated from the connection. Many of these were “negotiated” directly with the customer by the Branch Manager and were hardly an exact science especially if salad cream had smudged Phil’s workings.
To “control” our security the local rep had to do monthly stock checks often involving long walks around fields of caravans checking chassis numbers come rain or shine. One day I woke up with a stinking hangover and an audit at Cara-Cars to do. It had snowed so heavily the night before that I had had to crawl on all fours back from the local cricket club although that may have been the effects of a 25p a shot Pernod promotion. As I did not possess a pair of wellies I asked my mum if I could borrow dad’s pair. And so it was that I rolled up at Cara-Cars, destined for a solo march around field after field, scraping ice off chassis numbers with two over-sized left footed wellies.
Cara-Cars also had an enormous showroom and on another quiet day I rolled up to find that the lads had acquired a used Sinclair C5 electric car. Anybody old enough will remember these as a pioneering attempt at assisted suicide as by driving one on the open road you could be assured of being flattened by a truck within half an hour. Much cheaper than flying to Switzerland even in these days of Easyjet. What the owner of the business made of taking in one of these as part-exchange one could only guess at but the caravan sales guys were only one league down from their motor trade contemporaries in skulduggery.
As it was a slow day and with the option of discussing Payment Protection Plans with Nick and the lads as a forerunner to opening up a debate on why their business generation was so crap – never a good use of an afternoon – we decided to have the first and only Ilkley Sinclair C5 Grand Prix in the form of a time trial. The challenge was to see who could drive this crate, invented by Sir Clive Sinclair, one of Britain’s true geniuses (everybody has an off day), around a specially created course in the showroom without damaging several brand new caravans or crashing into carefully arranged desks and chairs thereby attracting a time penalty. Without doubt it was the longest visit I ever had at Cara-Cars prompting Hazel to suggest that we really must have made some progress that afternoon – which we had – we’d set the fastest lap never since surpassed around that showroom on the outskirts of Ilkley in a second hand C5.
You might wonder why we maintained these connections and the reasons were not always the same. In the case of the franchises we operated for the manufacturers – Peugeot, Citroen, Porsche (sadly all too briefly) and ABI Caravans then these demanded a presence nationally no matter what the size of dealer. Other relationships were entrenched in the mists of time and maintained if not for economic reasons then more tradition and sentiment. Then there were the big boys such as the national groups who had started to become increasingly acquisitive and the large regional players such as CD Bramall plc, Appleyards and JCT 600 Ltd that were growing in size and influence. Winning…or losing…one of these connections could make or break a local office…and shape personal career decisions as was to be the case a few years down the line.
4 – Stolen Car
Where there’s muck there’s brass so the saying goes and generally where there’s brass there’s muck too such is the lifelong relationship between risk and reward; any lender of money lives with is the knowledge that some of it will not get paid back. Whilst we think we are living in unique times it’s only the scale of the problem that varies over the decades. Twenty odd years ago there were still dodgy lenders and dodgy customers and as a consequence the existence of the Default Manager, whose role it was to chase the worst offenders, relying on help from the sales guys whose dealer accounts had put on the business in the first place. Not that I had much to worry about in the early years, given the amount of business my lot produced.
Some people did and still do get into difficulties through bad luck, changed circumstances or simply bad planning. Others, especially those being sold debt in plush showrooms, succumbed and continue to do so to pushy sales people and dreams of shiny metal they simply cannot afford. In the small minority of cases there also existed downright criminal activity either on the part of the customer or, worse still, in collaboration with one of the dealer staff, the same people you considered almost colleagues. To a man as a sales force we took this kind of activity very personally and were prepared to assist where we could and often outside the boundaries of where we should. Should you be tempted to judge us a cavalier here I would make the point that in those days we were hugely proud of the business and would defend it to the hilt. Towards the end of my working life there was very little left to consider defensible such was the seismic shift in sentiment.
Default Managers generally tended to be six foot plus tall, built like a house, often an ex- copper and with a pathological distaste for the villain. Big Al was all of these and more, having been married and divorced more often than Elizabeth Taylor and fleeced more times than a Moreland sheep in the process. At the ripe old age of sixty plus he simply did not need all this chicanery with low life villains and hard luck stories; he had enough of his own. He tended to wear the look of a man with all the worries of the world so it was wise to get on the right side of Al and his relationship with us lads in sales could also be prickly on occasions, as I am sure he viewed our very existence as in some small way complicit in the goings on he had to contend with. Whilst he was sympathetic and highly professional with the genuine cases he simply had no time for the villains.
We all spent many late evenings and Saturday mornings in the office chasing payment arrears with visits to estates across Bradford and beyond to try to collect what was due. Collecting money had its hazards, especially on the Eighth floor of a decaying tower block on a “challenging” estate. It was howling a gale as I looked down to where I may land if this went wrong when the door opened and a junior version of King Kong stood in front of me. I nearly paid the arrears off myself but, as with most people, generally they understood what and why you were doing what you were doing. In this case I think the potent stench from my trousers convinced the guy to throw a bit of cash my way if I promised not to come back for the rest too quickly.
Some customers actually were lifelong customers of MCC and seemed to view the due date of the monthly instalment as a break from the tedium of life preferring to visit the office with a paying in book and cold, hard cash instead of a direct debit; internet banking would not be catching on here. Occasionally, when the front office was busy and we were not quick enough to scarper back upstairs to safety, we had to man the counter. And twice during the day, via a rota system, each of the sales guys had to deliver the takings to the local Barclays which was, shall we say, in a less than desirable part of Bradford, although these days that could mean anywhere.
Lunchtimes were a breeze as you had more chance of being ripped off by Old Lad than getting a cosh over the head outside the bank. Night times were different, especially in winter as the bank was shut and you had to fumble with a key to open the safe in the wall and deposit a bag containing enough money to keep the locals in white powder for some time. As I always gave Jayne a lift home, in return she became the designated driver when a liquid lunch had its predictable effect and also my co-driver on bank rota duty ensuring turns on the rota became almost hysterical.
It was not nearly as bad as when Jayne’s mum shared the odd lift home as Joyce had the same impact as an unchained pit bull sat in the back of the car, but without the old dog we would adopt the following approach. Jayne would scan the approach to the bank which, as I later learned was totally pointless as she was blind as a bat, as I approached slowly, then at the last minute I lurched on to the kerb then flew out, literally bricking myself as I frantically opened the safe, hands shaking and dove back in the car to whoops of joy from Jayne: only because she did not have to catch the bus or drive me for a head repair to the nearby Bradford Royal Infirmary.
It was on a lunchtime visit that I first met the gorgeous and heavenly Katie, who worked on the counter at the bank. For six months I drooled, volunteered for extra bank rota duties oblivious to the increased personal risks and bored Jayne senseless with my new obsession. Then one day Jayne threatened to knock me senseless if I did not do something about it and so off I went at lunchtime determined to ask her out. Stood in the queue, in an unusually busy bank, I was shaking more than I had ever done on any dance floor and to the same effect. People were making space for me but eventually I got to the front and there she was. It was going to be a long, long way all downhill from here.
I cleared my throat and mumbled pathetically, quickly and inaudibly ”wuduliketogooutwime?”
She looked at me puzzled, asked me to repeat myself which I did twice and on the third attempt, loud enough for everybody either side of the counter to hear and break out in a spontaneous burst of applause. To my amazement she agreed and we dated for a few months until it became clear that I was already showing signs of being mentally deranged. Despite that perfect body, those beautiful eyes and her dad’s love of cricket – all things that made her the perfect woman – I could not devote enough time to her as I was already addicted to the smell of linseed oil and willow. If ever I needed a father figure to smack me violently around the head it was then and I suffered for years afterwards. Katie worked at several branches in future years and every time I saw her she seemed even more beautiful than the last time. My Gray Nicolls Scoop bat simply could not compete.
Repossessions with the Default Managers were also great fun in a perverse kind of way largely because they never ever seemed to go to plan. Technically, because of the type of personal loan as opposed to hire purchase that MCC offered to the private customer via the dealers we had no title rights to the vehicles. Business customers we signed up on hire purchase so that was different as long as the Hire Purchase Act, a piece of legislation dating back to the 1960s and archaic even then, was adhered to. However, if we were certain that a “customer” had obtained a car from a dealer by fraudulent means then we were determined to get this back and minimise our losses knowing full well that the halfwit concerned would hardly be likely to nip down and get a QC on his side preferring to roll over, open another tinny and watch Tricia.
One such morning I was helping Al in nearby Shipley and, it’s fair to say Al was slightly grumpier than usual which on his scale was heading towards homicidal. Defaults often increased rapidly when a dealer group ran a local incentive scheme generally offering substantial part exchange values or a minimal cash sum as deposit. A generous part exchange only meant the punter “paid” (or financed) an overpriced car whilst £99 down meant nothing as absolutely no cash changed hands. Nevertheless, such was the power of the dealers that the finance companies were powerless as the threat of losing the connection was always dangled. Only the big boys had the clout to run these schemes and, inevitably, they attracted hoards of potential customers/victims like a pack of rabid dogs descending on the showrooms in a feeding frenzy.
And so we found ourselves shivering outside this house, unable to generate any life from upstairs even though we simply knew our target was in. Al was not to be beaten and started hurling pebbles at the window. I suspect our target could not believe an employee of a major bank could be peppering his bedroom window with pebbles so he gave in and opened it, allowing a small smoke cloud to escape. Eventually, with Al having temporarily reverted to Good Cop, our tattooed friend allowed us in and given the abuse Al was subjected to I am amazed Bad Cop took so long to reappear. We left with no money having apparently wasted most of the morning with this grinning walking tattoo who headed back to his benefit assisted bed.
Calmly, Al took out his mobile phone and given the size of the early versions I thought that he was about to launch it at the bedroom window in one final mad act but he simply and calmly punched in the number of a local recovery firm that we used on all our more trying cases and wheels were set in motion. When I enquired why we were calling the lads out he simply smiled, thrust his hand in his pocket and flushed out a set of car keys belonging to our target. Now before I get Shami Chakrabarti and her human rights cronies at Liberty on the phone bleating about the rights and wrongs here…what would you have done? This guy had obtained a car by deception through a complicit salesman with no intention to pay. Plus the lazy twat was back in bed now well past mid-day and we were late for Chubbs. So when the recovery truck turned up Al again peppered his window with a few more pebbles and as the curtains twitched the car was slowly hitched to the truck and hauled up onto the trailer as an ashen-faced, gob smacked halfwit viewed on helplessly. And not for the last time I heard Al say “and do have a nice day!” Sometimes I felt I was with Clint Eastwood.
As I have said, we all took it personally if we knew there had been a deliberate wrong perpetrated. And so back to Old Lad, who at the time of the offence in question was looking after a major dealer who was offering one of the much feared £99 down schemes. In those days we all got alerts – not by the internet or email, simply Hazel glaring at you – of an FID otherwise known as a first instalment default. Sometimes these were what we termed as “technical arrears” , normally the bank mandate not being set up in time but there were some where you instinctively smelled a rat as was the case with the tale of “Snowy and the White Van”. Old Lad being the conscientious type took up the case immediately but was struggling to make much progress and it became clear that Snowy was not sending any dwarves to the office with the payments.
Then one day, Old Lad burst in excitedly as, out on one of his nightly runs around the local streets he had spotted Snowy’s van parked up. Given that Snowy was supposed to be a painter and decorator, there were precious few signs of the van being used for such a purpose, in fact it looked pristine. Determined to resolve the issue Old Lad contacted the dealer in question to get a duplicate key cut and was soon in the possession of a new key. The plan was to take the key out with him each evening he went running which, given how wrapped up he was in this case, became every night for the next several nights until one evening he saw the van again.
Hands trembling or as he later put it “shitting his pants” he snuck up behind the van, fearful of a pot of emulsion over his head or being assaulted with an extended roller. In those days few vans had alarms fitted especially those where the “owner” had never paid a bean anyway. Quickly he was in the driving seat, fumbling for the controls as the key turned and fired the engine – this being a British made van there was no guarantee the thing would actually start – who needed an alarm after all? Luckily, before Old Lad lost the few remaining strands of hair on his almost barren head, the engine spluttered into life and off he roared. Trouble was Old Lad lived quite close to Snowy and he also lived with his parents at the time so rather than explain his new career in van theft, he drove across town to the office where we had a small yard to the rear, just big enough to store a van.
Next day Old Lad had gained a sort of hero status amongst the girls and even Anne-Marie put down her bag of Cheese & Onion crisps, which was something as she went through a family pack a day. Of course whilst proud of him too the lads casually informed him that the beers were on him or we would grass him to Snowy who was well known in the local pubs. Mid morning came and with the barefaced cheek of a man that could see no wrong in what he had done, in walked Snowy to tell us his van had been nicked, the same one that for several months he had not paid a bean towards. Had he been quick enough he may have caught Phil quickly closing the blinds to the office which overlooked the rear yard and Snowy’s white van. Funnily enough we never saw him again and whilst it had its funny side – especially the speed of which Old Lad flew upstairs out of the way – the reality was that we would lose money here as this was now a used van, there was no way the dealer would make well any losses and Old Lad would not drink in the Swing Gate pub for a very long time. Such was the business we were in.
There were many other hilarious escapades recovering cars, all tempered by the harsh reality that we were losing money each time. Al actually got me to help him bring in a Lada from an estate between Bradford and Halifax only by virtue of me losing the draw made in the office as nobody really wanted to bring in a Lada. Time to haul on Derek’s overcoat and on a freezing day we arrived at the house of our troublesome customer to again be ignored. The arrangement had been that he would leave the car open with the keys in the dashboard as nobody in their right – or wrong – mind would actually want to steal a Lada. My Gran could actually walk faster than these things and she was eighty. Unfortunately both doors were locked; Al was getting colder by the minute and had that look of a man ready to explode.
Taking matters into his own hand he decided to smash the rear door window believing that the keys were locked inside only for this skinny, cocky lad to walk out of the house, down the path and casually fling the keys to us then disappearing back into the warmth. At this point we could have killed him, not least because I now had to drive this bone cruncher back to the office in sub zero temperatures with no hope of a heater working – they were made in Russia for God’s sake – and its resale value had fallen from £10 to £5.
There were better days. As a reward for my suffering Al took me along to repossess a Porsche in the centre of Leeds and I took the long route back to the office…via Scarborough. We repossessed an Opel Mantra, stored it in the yard for the weekend only for the crooks to steal it back, drop it off in a pub car park and torch it. Hauled off from a cricket match by the police to ascertain that this was our car to which I could only reply “well it was!”
The business was all about volume and if you wanted to play with the big boys then the risks were clear. We were hardly cavalier with our underwriting but there was a naïve belief within the trade that if you wanted a load of good cases then you had to take a few less so. In reality the losses you suffered on the bad stuff required a massively disproportionate level of clean business to compensate. The majority of car salesmen were actually decent guys simply earning a crust but it only took one bad apple to cost us a lot of money.
As a final mention of Al I have to credit him with the two best pieces of advice I ever had offered back to back one life defining morning as Old Lad and I stood in the loos taking a leak and, as men do, maintaining a urinal between us. In slipped the looming figure of Big Al between us and calmly asked us both what we were going to do with our bonus the next month. Now before the word “bonus” gets the blood boiling the company operated an annual bonus if the business had done well the previous year, it was paid in April and if you took it in bank shares and stuffed them under the bed for five years you paid no tax.
This was nothing like the obscene amounts paid to the chinless wonders in Canary Wharf each year simply because they got to go to the right school. Anyway, rant over, as Al advised Old Lad and me we had two choices: save for a rainy day or “go piss it against a wall”. You don’t get that from the Martin Lewis website. Being two cautious lads we took no convincing and it set us both up for life. As did the second bit of advice as he bundled us both into his Ford estate.
“Ever been on Lumb Lane you two?” he asked with a knowing grin (referring to the red light district of Bradford at that time). Neither of us had – not that he looked as if he believed us – so he took us on the short journey from Eldon Place to Lumb Lane just in time for the afternoon closing of the pubs in the days before all day drinking, whoring and puking brought in by Tony Blair to make us feel more continental and civilised. It was a frankly unreal sight as seemingly out of nowhere scantily clad women appeared as if beamed down by Scotty and cars appeared out of nowhere driven by middle-aged, doubtlessly married punters seeking a mid afternoon knee trembler. However, it was the pimps that fascinated me the most because they were almost to a man seven foot afro-Caribbean types the like of which I associated with scaring Geoffrey Boycott witless. And so for the free tax-planning and free sexual health advice I thank dear old Al from the bottom of my heart.
5 – If I Should Fall Behind
Having graduated from the Sticks pretty quickly and in the process preserving my sanity it was now time to get my teeth into some of the bigger groups. I still retained a lot of the smaller accounts as they took little time and nobody else was daft enough to want them anyway but the trade itself was changing rapidly and the days of the independents were numbered as the big boys flexed their muscles in alliance with the manufacturers. Brand was becoming ever more dominant and all the manufacturers were re-evaluating their dealer networks – none more so than Peugeot-Talbot/Citroen where we remained the primary finance provider of choice.
Some dealers were clearly going to fall by the wayside unable to afford the investment demanded in revamped showrooms as the price to retain these franchises. Whereas the likes of Bradford based JCT 600 had the financial clout and ambitious growth strategy to make the changes, others took a different route hoping simply to cling on as long as possible. One such dealership was a Peugeot operation in Shipley, a small town close to Bradford and dominated – if domination of Shipley meant anything at all – by a small, family owned motor group that had been “rivals” of JCT for many years although the contest had become much less of a fair fight in recent years. Its Peugeot operation was “managed” by a bizarre character named Sir Allen – “don’t forget the ‘e’ was his constant mantra” – often twirling a cigarette perched in a brown sixties style holder that looked like a relic from the classic Jason King TV character. Sir Allen strutted his stuff as if this operation were situated in Knightsbridge flogging Rolls Royce to the Arabs instead of French crap to the locals. If he had come out of his office in a silk dressing gown to heavenly choral voices it would not have surprised me.
Peugeot had embarked on a massive marketing strategy taking the novel approach – given they still retained the Talbot brand which was a rich man’s Lada, of sexing up their product range and from those early days the current sexy chic image of Peugeots was born. They had to do something as they had diddly-squat of the market place and so their initial attack was on the prime volume market – the company car man. Their campaign to launch the 405, a new car in the highly competitive Repmobile sector, dominated by Ford and Vauxhall, was underpinned by a lavish TV advert with clips from the blockbuster Tom Cruise film, Top Gun to the soundtrack of the hit song “Take Your Breath Away” by one hit wonders Berlin.
All dealerships were given a standard blueprint of how the showroom was to look which would involve serious expense, loud music and the all important “wow” factor hopefully meaning that customers would not pay too much attention to the heap of crap they were being sold. As a backdrop showrooms were to have mirrored walls with fire-effect decorative flames offering a Top Gun feel for the new saloon and this was going to be an expensive process aimed, you suspected, at sorting out the men from the boys and shedding a few franchises in the process. Sadly, once the budget Shipley overhaul had been finished it looked more like the last chance saloon.
It was the first and only time I ever came close to wetting myself on duty for the bank as Sir Allen greeted me with a waft of smoke and invited me in to see the new look. Sure enough there was glass on the walls but, unbelievably, these were a job lot of wardrobe door panels complete with bevelled door handles in each section bought from a local second hand furniture dealer. If it was the new corporate image then it was from Arthur Daley’s manual. To cap it all the “fire effect” was completed with some Chinese Christmas decorations and an old disco light with cracked orange plastic. There were no blowers to waft the decorations around seductively but enough gaps in the showroom walls to negate the need here.
It seemed there was a trend here because my other Peugeot connection in those days was the Ilkley dealership, part of a “group” – of two – the other being the nearby Renault dealership in Otley, owned by another autocratic, lordly figure who if you believed him had actually run British Leyland single-handedly in a past life. Why such a distinguished captain of industry was now running a couple of car dealerships in the sticks I could never fathom out. Glovers was actually run day to day by a guy called Pete who was Sales Manager, Human Resources (he was the only one), Car Cleaner and Petrol Pump Attendant. Pete was one of the guys who always seemed glad to see me – or anybody – because there weren’t that many customers strolling through the door. In fairness it was not entirely all down to the dealerships because for years the products they had to sell were hardly top drawer Well they were French made to start with and given that the average working year taking into account strikes, public holidays and general apathy was about twenty weeks then product development was hardly cutting edge on the part of old Johnny Foreigner.
There was, however, one jewel in the local Gallic crown that I loved looking after and this was Jack Andrews Cars, a Citroen dealership located in a predominantly Asian area of Bradford and owned by the Andrews family with Jack at the helm. Jack was a lovely guy, immaculately dressed, respected by all at the showroom and always interested in what you were doing. He was also very generous and my Sunday football team, Swing Gate FC, owed our brand new Umbro kit to his generosity wearing those black and red hoops with great pride if little distinction. It was my earliest “exploitation” of my business contacts as I strongly believe that local businesses should play a part in the communities they operate in and over the years have been supported by many like minded companies.
The day to day operation at Jack Andrews was largely run by the Sales Manager, Mike, a giant of a man, ruddy cheeks and almost permanent smile. Now Mike was a character and a half who could drink an ocean of real ale and still sell you a Citroen 2Cv most likely because you would have to be pissed to buy one and so he would probably have taken you round to the nearby Fighting Cock to secure the deal. Mike was also involved, as many in the motor trade were, in raising serious money for charities although with Mike it had to involve a pint or two. He was a key member of the Bad Buggers Club based at the Fighting Cock pub which was the original spit ‘n sawdust real ale pub. You needed panache to create a shithole and Big Jim, owner, founder and ultimate wrecker of what became for a while a chain of five pubs, was inimitable.
The Bad Buggers raised thousands for Guide Dogs for the Blind with the aspiration being to purchase at least one dog a year through their charitable, if largely pissed, efforts. Now we are not just talking about buying a Labrador here because the training of these dogs is very expensive running into thousands. The fund raising always took the form of a trip with the landlord at the helm and, whilst Big Jim was away, the remaining pub regulars would annually “revamp” the pub. Maybe Sir Allen should have called this lot in at the Peugeot showroom? Over the years Big Jim returned to find he was now running amongst others a wine bar complete with a disco ball (probably the same one as in the nearby showroom), a beach bar complete with sand and one year they converted the lounge into a farmyard with a real sheep to graze the newly laid turf. It was big hearted and big fun and they raised thousands in the process.
The Fighting Cock had now also become strategically important to MCC. Phil had finally retired and been hauled off by Vina and the dogs to spend the rest of his life shopping in Harrogate and we now had two new bosses and an early glimpse of the bank’s ability to create two jobs where one would do, perhaps the earliest evidence of Barclays leanings towards New Labour job creation techniques. New management often want to make their mark and they did so almost immediately by expanding our sales office empire to include the Fighting Cock as a satellite office…at least every Friday afternoon.
Perhaps realising my time was nearly up in Bradford I passed up the chance to get blathered every Friday and most times took a stroll downtown into Bradford in the days when you had a good chance of doing so unscathed. Friday lunchtimes were often spent in probably the best wine bar Bradford ever had, Ely McFlys, where they served continental lagers – not Carlsberg – and cheese and pate lunches on a delicious range of fresh breads. Tinkling away in the background was a white tuxedo wearing pianist…yes this honestly happened in Bradford. We’ve got a Greggs now! It was definitely time to move on.
6 – Further On (Up The Road)
By 1988 I had moved on a bit, sort of, and now was responsible for two of the three major motor group connections held by the Bradford office: JCT 600 Group and C D Bramall plc. Both groups were still run by their founders, respectively Jack Tordoff and Tony Bramall and both were tough, uncompromising and very hard working, ambitious businessmen. Whilst JCT was and has continued to develop as a multi-franchise group, Bramalls was largely Ford. Although Ford Credit had the primary relationship with Bramalls the value of being second provider was significant and, indeed, JCT had other manufacturer relationships it had to observe but again there was plenty of business to spread around as consumer finance continued to grow rapidly.
However, as the motor trade began to consolidate so the branch network operated by MCC began to contract in response to this. You could all see where it was heading but the most obvious sign was if an office was expensively (and often tastelessly) refurbished you could be sure it would be closing the following year. In those days the financial packages agreed and provided to secure business from major motor groups such as these were complex to a degree but always retained an element of local discretion. As far as evaluating risk and reward that was even less precise but the MCC business, as indeed in common with BMBF as I was to discover, was always primarily volume driven and at the mercy of the odd lunatic desperate to make a name for themselves.
However many computer based models designed to calculate the return from an account the Head Office boffins came up with most of us knew these were almost entirely subjective and about as precise as Phil’s moist Hamlet poking in the air. Still technology continued at a pace and, unbelievably, we were the first company to introduce a computer terminal into the dealers which would allow them to underwrite deals on the spot. The keys to the sweet shop were duly handed to the unruly school kids and, predictably, the floodgates opened.
The career progression route for senior management in MCC remained largely quite simple and the model barely changed throughout my career. Open up the floodgates, pile on as much business as you can, tell everybody what a great job you have done, secure the much coveted promotion and then scarper as fast as you can leaving somebody else to sort out the carnage left behind, careful to lay the blame at the feet of the new incumbent. It never, ever changed in twenty five years and largely because the man at the top always made sure he was surrounded by his people ensuring there was complicity in ineptitude. If you adopted a comparison with JCT 600 over the last twenty years and took away the comfort blanket of being part of a major bank then the effect of our management policies would have seen us still stuck in that showroom with the glass wardrobe doors – which sells carpets now – whilst JCT has become the largest independent motor group in the North of England.
Tony Bramall was to follow a different path selling the group to the multi-national car-rental business Avis although he was later to buy parts of this back and bring them back into the fold of his diverse business interests. The Bramall dealerships I looked after were based in Bradford, Shipley and Bingley and all were very different in size, approach and people. Bradford was the flagship site – it’s now a builders merchant – and was big enough to have its own Finance & Insurance (F&I) man, a guy called Nigel. They housed him in the equivalent of the Japanese prison camp “coolie” so naturally when the door opened and you popped in he assumed you’d brought him food and water. Nigel’s ambition was to open his own restaurant – I’m not sure if he ever did nor if he ever escaped solitary confinement – but we enjoyed our routine of Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning “business reviews” discussing recipes, techniques and more often the cricket.
Moving down the Aire Valley Road I was back again in Shipley and here there was no F&I man and our business came, in the main from the used car “zoo”, which is now part of the Asian restaurant chain the Aagrah. I say zoo because by and large the lads were animals and if you did not read The Sun, love football and belch and fart in unison you were doomed. Although it was here I met Stuart, ex-Army, then used car salesman and soon to be new joiner at MCC. The best call of all in the Bramall Empire though was the satellite office in Bingley a few miles up the road. Housed there was a character I have known ever since and as a young, good looking lad with oodles of confidence, Second Hand Stuart seemed to know every woman in this small market town. I would sit in his office – another carpet showroom now – and never fail to be amazed at the constant stream of women walking past each day with a smile and a wave followed by Stuart invariably mouthing back “I’ll be free in a few hours”. The man must have fathered half of Bingley and beyond.
It was time to move on with four years working within the motor trade being enough for anybody. I’m not really sure what I had learnt bar being able to name almost every Page 3 girl going as well as most of Second Hand Stuart’s girlfriends as well, which was a much more challenging task. With our new management team in place; the dreaded refurbishment completed and a new company logo launched at ridiculous expense the signs were written on the wall. Looking back, the four years at No 8 Eldon Place were never bettered, a feeling shared by most of us that worked there and largely due to a great bunch of people. We had a business we all believed in passionately and the human touch of an old-fashioned manager who few could fail to like; sadly, all good things come to an end.
Aunty Janet says
Had me laughing so much I cried and nearly wet myself. My god those really were the days, things and people I had forgotten about especially Bernard, loved him to bits, is he still around? Love your writing, clever little Stevie xx
Steve says
Thank you Auntie J! They were fantastic days I agree…we were so, so lucky. No idea re Bernie but he was so kind and patient to me…hope he still has that glint in his eye!
x