publishing, to Urwick Orr the leading Management Consultants. Gerry Hill ,who was one legged, having lost it in the war, was one of those large dominating men with a huge personality and who was a close friend of Wormald’s ,and who I took an instant liking to ,and it turned out that by a co-incidence his sister lived just down the road from us where he was a frequent visitor. While I was up in Norfolk I suggested to Leslie that a new 30 ft yacht that he had just built would sell better if I had a demonstration boat on the south coast at Shoreham where I could look after it and show it off to prospective clients. He readily agreed and so suddenly in early 1966 I sailed it down with him first in a terrible gale to Ramsgate and then onto Poole in Dorset and back to Shoreham near Brighton. It was wonderful to be almost penniless, and yet have a lovely yacht at weekends to sail. We took it on holiday through the Solent to Lymington and cruised around the Isle of Wight. The children would have mackerel lines astern as we sailed in sunny windy seas, and they laughed and cheered as they hauled the fish in for Jill to fry up later.
The crunch came when Barlow our accountant and I put our proposal to the board. Hill arrived as he had a stake in the project and I gave him coffee in my office at Queen Anne’s Gate. We waited whilst he grew impatient and said he had never been treated so off handedly. Meanwhile I rushed to find out what all the delay in the Board meeting was about, and finally a secretary came out for a moment and I asked how our project was getting on?
“ It isn’t, that is for sure”, she replied, “ there has been a major row and the trawling division directors and others had decided to sack Wormald. All they are now doing is to clear up his severance terms”. I returned with the news to Hill who was upset as I was too, as I expected to get my notice almost immediately being one of his men. The office politics there was a bit like the Kremlin, and when the leader departed so did his immediate underlings get the axe. But it was not to be, and instead I went to work on for another year with the technical director helping set up a Marine Gravel Dredging project. Scott Williams my new boss was mercurial character, charming one moment and a demon the next. He too was an ex- Management Consultant, a South African born engineer, not married, a keen ocean going yachtsman who was for ever having a tempestuous relationship with his secretary. He was excellent at his job and his methods of going about the calculations of setting up a major new project, was a real orderly education in itself. Under his orders I took out a trawler on numerous occasions in the North Sea from Lowestoft, when the weather was calm and confirmed the sonar soundings of likely gravel beds, liaised with Civil Engineers, met Frenchmen in Calais regarding dredgers, and worked with British Rail on sites for stockpiling our production. But Scottie and I did not get on. We were totally different people, and somehow there was no empathy between us. In any case I felt now that it was time to move on, and for six months I was looking at all sorts of new ventures to start up on my own account, using the business training that I had acquired.
One bleak November day I was chatting to a colleague on the train who wanted to insulate his house with fibre glass which was fairly new at the time, and I began wondering about the home insulation market. I phoned up my ideas to my friend David Hart who suggested I acquire some premises to operate from. I picked up the phone to the Whiteheads the main Brighton Commercial Estate Agents, and was put in touch with Mr Padwick, their partner in Billingshurst . I told him of what I had in mind and he said that he knew of a very large place in Horsham which was being sold privately and not on the open advertised market. He sent me details and I telephoned a Mr Sargeant to make an appointment.
“ I dont want any of the staff to know I am selling, so come and see me at the shop at 6 pm on Saturday” he gruffly replied.
I turned up on the dark November night with a steady drizzle streaming down, and met him as agreed. He showed me round the enormous premises, covered in cobwebs, dust, with only a few bare bulb electric lights to illuminate the dismal gloom. We walked all around and he said that he wanted a rent of £1,500 a year and £9,000 for the business plus the stock at valuation. I liked the idea of really getting down to tangible work, and the shop was only 9 miles through leafy lanes from home. Its problem was the frontage was small, only 25 ft but the site had about 5,000sq.ft of space. A decision was needed and I always think quick on impulse and hunch, and so I turned to him and said:
“How far is the shop from the centre of town?”
“Oh only 50yds or so” he replied.
“ Right I will take it, and will be in touch next week when I have had a chance to talk to my accountant”.
Sargeant was amazed, he turned and said:
“Where do you come from?”
“I am from Ceylon, and I want to start up in business in England”.
“Well fancy that”, he retorted, “ I am just going over to the Golf Club with my wife to have dinner with a chap over from Ceylon called Arthur Lintott who is a member of the large Horsham family with interests in engineering and retailing”.
“ Give him my kindest regards as I used to meet him often at Pat and Susan Fincher’s at Welimada, where as all were staunch Catholics they would come up from Colombo for the cool of the hills.”
I returned home pleased with the coincidence, and finally I felt that my path ahead was becoming slowly apparent. That evening we poured ourselves a scotch and sat in our chairs to watch the evening news and what a shock it turned out to be. As we watched I gasped. Harold Wilson who was Prime Minister was on the black and white screen to say that because of the sterling crisis there was going to be a 20% devaluation of the pound.
“ Of course there will be no change in the value of the pound in your pocket” he smoothly declared, “but to maintain the value and keep the economy stable there would be an immediate complete halt on all Bank Credit”.
On Monday morning I was off to Horsham to visit all the local Bank Managers and drew a complete blank, so the following day shortly after arriving at my desk I telephoned John Oliver the tough accountant that Leslie Landamore used. I told him of my plans of going retailing “well the problem with that business is controlling stock!” he prophetically replied. I told him that I needed £9,000 from the bank and the rest I would raise from my own and family resources and if he was a good accountant, raising the money would be his first test. He was very keen to back me and positive over my plans and told me that he would make inquiries and phone me back, which he did a couple of hours later.
“Mike , very good news, it is all fixed up and I have got the facilities at 2% over base rate”
I was delighted to get his confirmation of the loan and replied:
“What marvellous news, how did you do it and with what bank, and also what about all this complete clamp on Bank Credit that the Prime Minister has announced?”
“ Oh I have a very good friend of mine who is the Manager of the Midland Bank at Holborn, and he has agreed, and we got around the credit problem by us just predating letters to last week prior to the ban. Where there is a will there is always a way around any problem!”. So with that remark, John Oliver commenced negotiations with Mr Sargeant and beat him down from £9,000 to £6,500 and after Christmas I was able to hand in my notice to Associated Fisheries. It had been a long grind working in London, a tremendous education in business experience, and in learning how to start up a new enterprise all of which I would in the near future have to use on my own account with very limited funds.
The last two months with a broker friend of David Harts I started playing futures on the commodity market buying cocoa. Suddenly I had made £2,000 just before my departure and was able to purchase a new Austin 1800 which was like a big wide mini for £800 to replace my old Magnette which was falling apart with rust. I felt keen active and confident and finally on the 14th February 1968 I took over the business of Scott & Sargeant in Horsham.
