Memoirs of a Fruitcake Read online

  ‘The management feel they can no longer work with you and have left,’ I offered up as a starter.

  ‘They have what?’ said one of the board.

  ‘They’ve gone, they’re no longer here, I am on my own and I am just a DJ, I have no idea what really goes on here and we need to get them back.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said another member of the board.

  ‘Precisely,’ I concurred.

  ‘Well, this is not good, not good at all,’ said a third.

  ‘I agree wholeheartedly,’ I whimpered. By now they could see I was distressed.

  ‘What exactly is their issue?’ said the guy who had spoken first.

  ‘Growing the company is what they do, they identified a perfectly valid opportunity and you have refused point blank to support them.’

  The board were sympathetic to their case but immovable when it came to taking any risk. I have to say they had a perfectly sound argument and one with which I was finding it very difficult to disagree. However, I still had a problem.

  ‘That may be the case,’ I bleated, increasingly desperate, ‘but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, I am on my own on this side of the table and all our employees are about to arrive at work and wonder where the hell the three blokes who run this place have disappeared to.’

  ‘So what do you want us to do?’ said the first one.

  I hadn’t actually thought about the answer to this question. I just presumed the board would know what to do. I opened my mouth and hoped something half-sensible might come out.

  ‘You need to reassure them that it’s because of their efforts that we find ourselves in the position of having to do nothing.’ So far so good. ‘And then you need to tell them how good they are and … er … give them some more money.’

  I have no idea where this last bit came from.

  ‘You want us to give the management a bonus for walking out?’

  I wasn’t sure if I did or not but I wasn’t about to stop now.

  ‘Yes, more money, they’re businessmen after all, that’s what they’re about. We need to get them back in the door and re-incentivise them at the same time. A cheque each is the only way.’

  Now this, dear friends, is me being extremely bad at business but extremely good at selling. Let’s face it, this was a terrible idea. People often say what a great businessman I am but there is nothing further from the truth. I am many things, but I am not, never have been and never will be a great businessman.

  Although the management had an almost justifiable beef, there’s no way they should have deserted me in the first place, let alone been rewarded for doing so.

  Indeed, when I foolishly tried a similar stunt a couple of years down the line, the whole episode ended up costing me £13 million and I didn’t work for the next three years.

  But I must have been very convincing on the day because the board actually agreed to my suggestion, authorising me to dish out some new share options in the direction of my management team – if they deigned to return to work, that is.

  I skipped off to the restaurant where they were waiting, happy to be the bearer of good news and confident they would see sense.

  When I turned up they looked like three naughty schoolboys hoping to high heaven they weren’t going to get caned. If I’m totally honest, they looked like they thought they might be about to get fired. I suspect that they’d had time to reflect on their impetuousness and were perhaps beginning to think better of it. No need, though, for I only brought glad tidings of great joy.

  ‘You are all bonused up and back in business’, I declared to three visibly relieved and frankly somewhat surprised faces.

  I only wish someone had been able to say the same to me later when, as I’ve said, I tried a similar stunt, but there I go, jumping the gun again.

  Now, houses next and how to buy a really big one that you definitely can’t afford.

  TOP

  10

  MUST HAVES WHEN I BUILT MY DREAM HOUSE

  10 Helipad

  9 Trout lake

  8 Hot tub (wooden – outdoor)

  7 Village shop in the kitchen

  6 Library

  5 Waterfall in the library

  4 Identical replica of my local pub

  3 Steam room

  2 Cinema

  1 Space

  WITH THE ROCK-STAR LIFESTYLE COMES THE ROCK-STAR MANSION and all that goes with it. It’s all so unoriginal, I know, but nobody teaches you how to be rich and I fell for every cliché in the book.

  I’d been looking for a place ‘out of town’, as they say, for a year or two and as the millennium was looming I still hadn’t seen anything that remotely took my fancy. Not for want of trying, I might add, as I spent most weekends viewing properties from the east coast of Kent all the way down to the sand dunes of Dorset.

  If there was a big house with land for sale, I wanted to see it. I looked at castles, farms, lighthouses, windmills – I even looked at one place that had its own airstrip where the chap who owned it said I could have his Fokker thrown in for free!

  So far, though, for one reason or another, nowhere had quite clicked. In fact it was getting to the point where I had just about exhausted all combinations of commutable counties and different types of dwellings therein. I needed something to happen to help me change my mindset, and it did, on a skiing holiday to Whistler in Canada, of all places.

  This holiday was a freebie and, like most freebies, was probably more trouble than it was worth. After all who would travel several thousand miles to another continent for a skiing holiday that lasted just four days? Me and my old pal Johnny Boy Revell, that’s who. We were both from council estates and still hadn’t quite got over the fact that people were willing to give us stuff for free.

  We almost felt like we had to go, despite the immense jetlag and the fact that by now we were both well off enough to pay for ourselves to go first class practically anywhere in the world. But a bargain was a bargain and so off we trotted deep into the snowy peaks of the Canadian Rockies.

  Barely able to keep our eyes open when we arrived, we just about managed to hire a Chevrolet Silverado 4x4 pickup truck, throw our gear in the back and get on our way. We were soon to discover there are some things that can blow the cobwebs of jetlag clean out of the water.

  Almost the second we hit the mountain road we became overwhelmed by what lay before us. In less than half an hour we were in a wilderness of calm and serenity, a world away from the hubbub of the tempestuous media rat race. There really was nothing but a blanket of white for as far as our tired eyes could see. Truly spellbinding.

  As we continued on our way, we passed countless expanses of icy blue water, one of which was so breath-takingly beautiful we just had to stop, get out and stare at it for a few minutes.

  As the wonder of the Rockies continued to astound, a newfound sense of peace slowly began washing over the pair of us but, where I was concerned, I could also feel a slight trace of anger beginning to gnaw at its heels.

  ‘Where is this anger coming from?’ I thought. ‘This isn’t right, I was about to be really content. Please leave me alone.’

  But it wasn’t going anywhere. It wanted a word.

  ‘Why on earth haven’t you sorted out a house in the country back in the UK yet?’ it snorted. ‘You spend every weekend cooped up in your flat in London crawling from one ugly watering hole to the next when you could be out and about feeling the way you do now. You have the money, go get a life!’

  I had to concede this anger had a point. I made a private deal with it to do two things when I returned back home.

  1. I would buy a Chevrolet Silverado 4x4.

  2. I would buy a house in the country within a month.

  True to my word, I ordered the Chevy immediately upon my return, to be delivered on Christmas Day 1998. As for the house, I concluded that because I had looked at well over a hundred in the last year, at least one of which must have been suitable, it could only be reluctance on my part
to commit to a big move out of the city that was the problem, rather than not having found a suitable property.

  So here’s what I decided to do:

  I would simply instruct an estate agent to take me to look at the five best houses currently for sale in the south-east of England, regardless of cost. After seeing all five, I would then undertake to buy the one that I liked the most, even if I didn’t really like it that much at all. This way I was forcing myself into a ‘yes’ situation.

  I know this philosophy is a little extreme, especially for a boy who started life on a council estate with little more than his pocket money, his push bike and a paper round, but this is where I now found myself and I was determined to make the most of it.

  There was more drastic action to come.

  Because these houses were likely to be tens of miles apart, maybe even hundreds, it was going to be quite difficult to compare and contrast them. I therefore informed the agent to arrange all five viewings consecutively on one single day and to meet me that morning at Battersea heliport. I also kindly requested he seek permission from the vendors concerned for us to land in their gardens. We were about to have the viewing trip of a lifetime.

  When we climbed up above Richmond Park on the Wednesday morning in question the rest of the world was at work. I don’t know who had to try the hardest to play it cool, the agent or myself. We were both grinning from ear to ear.

  Extravagant as this strategy may seem, there was more than a grain of sanity in what we were doing. After all, we were dealing with houses worth several million pounds each, and if it took a one-day lease of a Twin Squirrel to secure the right one, then it would be money well spent. The fact that it was a tonne of fun in the process was merely a bonus, albeit a pretty big one. Plus it meant I could also get to spy into the gardens of any potential new neighbours whilst we were at it.

  The first property we looked at was in Windsor, right on the River Thames. It was huge, Georgian, white and stunning. After a quick scoot round, enough to gain a mental picture, we were back on board and up and away again. Next stop Chichester, to look at a renovated castle. This was also very nice. Protected by its own moat, with fabulous lawns, the present owners had spent a small fortune renovating their home by blending ultra-modern with genuinely ancient. As a result there was lots of new glass, mixed in with old stone – a real wow house, but just a bit too far away from London to make it practical.

  Two landings completed, two houses down and Windsor was still winning. Time then for number three. The pilot tracked back over the South Downs, overflying Goodwood and Midhurst, before landing on the lawn of a fabulous house just off the A3, complete with its own lake, working water-mill and state-of-the-art recording studio.

  ‘Who lives in a house like this?’ I could hear the voice in my head say.

  ‘Roger Taylor from Queen’s place,’ whispered the agent, as if he’d heard me.

  The story goes that when Queen had their first hit album, Roger went straight out and bought this house. It didn’t occur to him that they might not have another one; Roger told me this story himself. He also told me about the first time Freddie Mercury came over to visit. He said that Freddie couldn’t believe how audacious the band’s drummer had been with his recent purchase, so much so that he immediately felt compelled to return to London to buy a brand-new white Rolls-Royce from Jack Barclays. Having achieved this in no more than a couple of hours, Freddie was back at Roger’s in his new wheels in time for tea.

  Roger couldn’t have been more welcoming that day and his house was to die for; so fabulous, in fact, that he ended up withdrawing it from the market and staying there himself, though not before adding a new library wing – all 7,000 square feet of it.

  Time then for house number four.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Hascombe Court, a turn-of-the-century manor house set in forty-seven acres of Gertrude Jekyll gardens, situated a few miles south of Guildford. This house was heaven on earth, sitting atop a hill overlooking the quaint little village from which it took its name.

  No more than fifteen minutes after we landed there I made a call to my long-suffering accountant.

  ‘Kirit, I would like to buy a house.’

  ‘OK, that’s fine, where is it and how much?’

  ‘It’s near Guildford and it’s £4 million, which is a bargain because it was £5.5 million.’ This was true; it had been on the market for over a year. I couldn’t believe no one had snapped it up.

  ‘Chris, you don’t have £4 million.’ ‘I know that, but can we get it?’

  Poor Kirit – who actually isn’t poor at all but you know what I mean – he’s had to cope with several telephone calls like this over the years, the most recent being when I bought a car I couldn’t afford at an auction in Italy in 2007. That phone call followed exactly the same lines and both times I’m happy to say he came up with the funds required to indulge my desires.

  I never ask how he does it – I think it’s probably best I don’t know – but following such episodes I try not to call him again about anything for as long as I possibly can.

  On this occasion I would have to call Kirit back sooner rather than later as it transpired that Hascombe Court and its forty-seven acres turned out to be only the half of it – literally.

  After the phone call I discovered that over the road was the second half of the estate which was made up of a farm, three cottages and another hundred and twenty-seven acres which was also up for sale.

  ‘Kirit, I need a further £1.5 million, there’s more of the estate to be bought.’

  ‘I see,’ he sighed.

  I was so sure about Hascombe Court that I didn’t even bother going to look at house number five, asking the pilot to return us safely and swiftly to London.

  Within four weeks I had completed the purchase of both lots for a total purchase price just shy of £6 million. I suddenly had an idea how Roger may have felt all those years before, wondering where his band’s next hit might come from, but you know what? I really didn’t care. Besides, I could always sell it again if I had to, which was a bloody good job because that’s precisely what was destined to happen.

  They say one of the best ways to go about making a small fortune is to start with a big one and lose most of it. That is exactly what the stars had lined up for me but I was yet to do the losing bit. So, let’s find out how that happened first, shall we?

  TOP

  10

  RESTAURANTS I’LL NEVER FORGET

  10 The Italian when I was 20 where a date asked for Parmesan cheese to go with her pasta. I thought it was a greedy request for an additional course

  9 My first Chinese. I got cramp from trying to eat with chopsticks

  8 My first Indian, where a ‘mate’ told me to go for the phal. The phal was still going for me the next morning

  7 The French restaurant where I had my first meal with Michael Grade (former head of Channel 4). I ordered steak tartare and had no idea it was just raw meat

  6 Lunch in the Palm Grill in Los Angeles with Bernie Brillstein and Brad Gray when I was 29, just after they offered me $11 million to work on TV in the States

  5 Lunch in Langan’s with Ronnie and Peter O’Toole

  4 Dinner with Billie in the Four Seasons the night before we were married in Las Vegas

  3 The wedding lunch at Alambique in the Algarve, which is run by my best man Paulo, and where my wife Natasha and I started our new life together

  2 Lunch in Little Italy with Jade and her mum after finally getting my shit together to do something about my relationship with my daughter

  1 Lunch, again at Langan’s, with my management team-read on

  FOR A BRIEF WHILE THE MANAGEMENT TEAM were back in the building and back on side, but I could tell there was an ongoing and underlying frustration sapping their spirits. They were now under strict instructions that our fledgling golden brand was only to be polished, no longer pawned, in the quest for additional treasures.

  It was at
this point I realised I could do little more than I already had done to appease them, and that in reality I owned the company in name alone. I may have been signing the cheques but I was definitely not calling the shots.

  Unrest soon began to set in for all of us and unrest, by its very nature, tends to grow as opposed to diminish. My guys were once again becoming more and more like caged tigers with the passing of each day. They were desperate to be cut loose and make the company more money, but instead they had to close their minds, eyes and ears to the countless business opportunities that were piling up in their in-trays.

  I decided we needed a chat to clear the air.

  ‘Lunch?’ I suggested to DC.

  ‘Oh yes,’ came the resounding reply.

  ‘Langan’s?’ I suggested.

  ‘We’ll meet you there’, he confirmed.

  Langan’s Brasserie is by far the best place for lunch I have ever been to in my life and I have been fortunate enough to have been to quite a few. Located just off Piccadilly, opposite Green Park, Langan’s doesn’t do quiet in any way shape or form. If you want quiet, Langan’s is not the place for you. For everything else, however, it’s brilliant.

  Its energy, atmosphere, opulence and patronage are unique. And it’s always busy, even on the first Monday in January, notoriously the quietest day in every restaurant in the land. From lunch at midday right through to last orders at midnight, Langan’s never stops buzzing.

  I’ve yet to be invited down to the kitchen but can only presume it’s a sight to behold, as the head chef and his loyal team churn out dish after dish of some of the most comforting food known to mankind: good old English fare, fearlessly fatty and dripping with calories.

  There’s the sausage and mash made with far too much butter, the beautiful cod in batter so brittle it explodes in your mouth, the liver and bacon so bountiful it obscures the evidence of any plate beneath, and the croustade d’oeufs de caille – a sort of quails’ egg pasty – which is so good that quite frankly it should be illegal.

  The waiters who run the whole show are dressed like boxing referees in black trousers, crisp white shirts with black dickybows and black silk waistcoats. They pride themselves on efficient service yet still appear to have plenty of time to chat to the customers whilst simultaneously being rushed off their feet. I’ve never quite figured out how it is they achieve such an illusion; maybe they’re all secretly magicians.