What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (36 page)

I photocopied the cheque and immediately rushed it to the bank. I showed the photocopy to my brother and sisters, who did share my excitement. I had two million quid in the bank - unbelievable!

Unfortunately, the Chigwell Mafia was alerted.

Alan Sugar, the chap they'd previously passed on the shopping parade with their noses held high, had suddenly become a local celebrity. People were now saying to me, 'Hello, how are you? How are things?' and trying to engage in conversation.

A bit of my mum came out in me. Not over the wealth issue, but more that these people wouldn't have given me the time of day before and now suddenly they wanted to talk to me. It wound me up a lot and I'm sure I must have come across as rude and dismissive.

The same thing happened with Ann. Suddenly people who had previously ignored her wanted to talk to her. In fairness, it wasn't a case of them expecting any financial favours; it was more that they wanted to be associated with Alan Sugar of Chigwell.

In the Jewish circle of the Chigwell Mafia, the Don at the time was Mr Clive Bourne. The whole community looked up to him. He was a wealthy individual who had inherited part of his fortune from his family business. He resided in Roding Lane, in a house previously owned by the boss of electronics giants Plessey. Clive would hold court with his admirers and was perceived to be
the
man. I think I had dethroned him somewhat, though I still lived in what was considered a modest home compared to those in Roding Lane or Manor Road.

Sitting at home one evening, there was a knock on the door. Standing outside were two gentlemen, Mr Paul Balcombe and Mr Stuart Rose, two of the Don's admirers. I was surprised to see them and didn't really know who they were. I invited them in and they sat down in the lounge.

Paul Balcombe explained that he led the fundraising within the local Jewish community and that I now needed to join the club and start contributing. His attitude came across to me as very arrogant, dictatorial even. He spoke with a real insistence in his voice, telling me I
had
to do this and I
had
to do that. Stuart Rose sat there quietly, nodding in agreement. It was clear that the Chigwell Mafia had appointed these two to make an approach to me.

Balcombe had heard that I was a man of few words and rather blunt, so he decided to adopt an aggressive attitude, which perhaps he thought might impress me. He was wrong. I was burning up with fury at what I perceived to be this very presumptuous and supercilious fellow. How dare he dictate to me what I should do as regards to charitable donations? In fact, the matter hadn't crossed my mind at the time, but I certainly wasn't going to be dictated to by people who, up till then, had passed me by on the street.

Finally, my temper overcame me and I told Balcombe to mind his own bloody business. I didn't need him to tell me which charity I should or should not support. I swiftly showed them the door and effectively kicked the pair of them out.

Ann told me I was too harsh, but I was furious. She tried to calm me down while I stormed up and down saying, 'I don't like the attitude of these people. Who the hell do they think they are?'

It was a few years before I actually got on speaking terms with Paul Balcombe. Stuart Rose was actually a very nice fellow. He was the local optician and everybody went to him for their glasses. He lived opposite me, next door to Gerry and Norma, and on some occasions when we socialised with them, Stuart and his wife Valerie would pop in. I think Stuart apologised to me for the famous meeting.

My PS2m was sitting in a deposit account earning an amazing 14 per cent interest - over PS5,000 a week, an incredible figure. Meanwhile, I had met up with a chap called Howard Stanton, a very nice fellow. He was well respected in City circles and chaired fundraising for the local Chigwell & Hainault Synagogue. The synagogue had debts following the recent addition of an extension to the main building. Together with Howard, I worked up a scheme. The synagogue would open an account at Lloyds Bank in Islington and I would deposit the whole PS2m for a period of nine months, by which time it would have accrued a lot of interest. At the end of the nine-month period, the PS2m would be repaid to me and the PS200,000 interest would go to the synagogue.

This was an innovative and tax-efficient way of making a donation to the building fund and it worked like a dream, after some nifty work with the lawyers. In gratitude, they put a plaque in my name at the entrance of the synagogue. This was a proud moment for Johnnie. He came to Chigwell & Hainault Synagogue one Sabbath - instead of his usual Beehive Lane haunt - probably just to look at the plaque and boast to a few of his mates whom he'd dragged along. Well, good luck to him, it was his moment of glory - his
son-in-law had done something he was
really
proud of. This donation to the synagogue showed the Chigwell Mafia how I really operate.

*

Ann has never been a demanding person, but she's very funny in some ways. When she gets a bee in her bonnet about wanting to do something, she becomes very determined.

The children were getting older and, while Ann is not materialistic in any sense, she wanted us to move to a larger house with more space. She employed the services of local estate agent Cyril Dennis (after a few minutes' conversation I got the impression that if you shook his hand you'd need to count your fingers afterwards - but I often feel that about estate agents). Loads of property details came through from Cyril, none of which we liked.

Manor Road was deemed the place to be, but I never really liked it. It occurred to me that we should drive around the Chigwell area ourselves and look at houses we wouldn't mind buying. Ann thought this was a nutty idea, but at least she saw I was signed on to her desire to move. We drove around and identified four or five homes that looked good. I wrote a letter to each of the owners. Next day, I went out with Daniel in the car and he shoved the letters through the letter boxes. Interestingly enough, we received replies from most of them, polite responses thanking us for our interest but telling us they had no intention of selling. All apart from a Mr Derek Higgins, the owner of a house known as Bramstons in Roding Lane, the most prestigious road in the area - the Don's house was in Roding Lane. It had actually come onto the market four years earlier and we'd had a look at it, another of Ann's whims. The lady who'd lived there for the past eighty years, Mrs Pratt, had passed away and it was in a completely dilapidated state. I'll never forget the first time I viewed Bramstons. In what's now my study, there was an old Bakelite telephone on the windowsill and in the centre of the dial was written 'CHIGWELL 8'. This was the number that had been allocated to the Pratt family dating back to the earliest days of telephony - they had the only eighth telephone in Chigwell!

We didn't buy the house at the time, as it was derelict and really needed to be bought by a builder - Derek Higgins was just that. He was a well-respected man who ran a very big firm, D. J. Higgins & Co. Now, three or four years on, he had decided to sell it and contacted me. Ann and I were round there like a rocket, having noticed the magnificent refurbishment that had taken place.

While Derek and his wife showed us around the house, Ann was digging
me in the back, as if to say, 'This is it. You're buying this whether you like it or not.' Each room we walked into, she'd dig me in the back one more time - I was getting the message loud and clear.

I agreed to buy the house for PS400,000. Derek had one proviso, however. He wanted to retain the very large field adjacent to it. This became a bit of a bone of contention between Derek and me, but he wouldn't give in. He had ideas of getting planning consent to build other houses on the field. To cut a long story, I agreed with Derek that if he couldn't get consent for the field, he would give me the first option to buy it, which I eventually did.

We sold our house in Chigwell Rise to a young couple. It was nice to see these newlyweds wanting to buy the house that Ann and I had enjoyed for so many years. I never really negotiated hard on it and sold it to the fellow for PS100,000. Ten years earlier, I had paid PS27,000 for it.

Once we moved into Bramstons, we employed the services of a Mr John Cheke to build us a swimming-pool and a pool house, while a company called Doe built a state-of-the-art tennis court on the land adjacent to the house. Tennis is a passion I still have today.

With all this work going on, we needed to landscape the garden. John Cheke introduced me to one of the funniest characters I've ever met - Arthur Sewell, a gardener. His claim to fame was that he was the chief groundsman for Valentines Park in Ilford, and what he didn't know about landscaping and horticulture wasn't worth knowing. The trouble with Arthur was that he did not stop talking. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. He had this way of saying, 'Righto, sir. Okay, sir. With respect, sir. Understand that, sir.' Everything was 'sir', or 'madam' when he spoke to Ann.

Arthur would get on everybody's nerves. In the end, all John Cheke's and Doe's workers simply ignored him. He would walk around telling them they were doing everything wrong as far as earth movement was concerned. To be fair, he had a great wealth of knowledge and everybody respected him for that, but he wound all the workers up.

Arthur would get hold of me as I was about to leave for work and quote the Latin names for shrubs. 'There you are, sir, this is a
Cupressus Wilma,
known for its lemon smell if you rub the leaves in the palm of your hand. Just smell that, sir - lemon, see, sir? That is
Cupressus Wilma,
sir.'

'Righto, Arthur. Well done, son. Nice.'

'Well, I hope you appreciate the work, sir. I'm working very hard, sir. With respect, very hard, sir, making sure you're going to have the best garden in Essex.'

'Fair enough, Arthur. I've got to go now.'

'Righto, sir. See you on the weekend then. By the way, sir, I've noticed around the tennis court these Doe people haven't done a very good job in laying the stones. May I respectfully suggest, sir, that you allow me to put in some paving around the area that will allow you and your lovely lady wife to walk up to the tennis court without getting your shoes dirty.'

'Fine, Arthur, fine. Just go ahead and do it.'

'With respect, sir, I wouldn't do it without you giving me the okay, sir. I don't know how much it's going to cost; I'll give you a price later on, sir.'

'Fine, Arthur. Get on with it. Now I've got to go.'

'Righto, sir. Have a good day.'

If you've ever watched the TV programme
Columbo,
you'll know that one of Lieutenant Columbo's traits was to look as if he was leaving and then come back and say, 'There's just one more thing, sir . . .' It was the same with Arthur.

'Sir, just one more thing, with respect, we need to buy some Hayter mowing machines, sir. The rubbish we've got here at the moment is no good, sir, with respect. Is it okay with you, sir, if we go down to the garden centre and buy some mowing machines, sir?'

'Yes, Arthur, go and buy some mowing machines. Go on, off you go.'

'Well, once again, sir, I don't want to spend your money without you knowing.'

'Right, Arthur, I'm going now. Please don't talk to me any more today, thank you.'

'Righto, sir, I know you are busy. Thank you very much, sir.'

You could never escape from him. I used to get the kids to go outside and see if he was around and when the coast was clear, I'd make a quick dash for the car.

I also inherited a gardener called Dennis Croak, who used to do the garden for Derek Higgins. Dennis was a lovely chap. His day job was at the Bank of England printing works in Debden, near Chigwell, looking after their gardening requirements. He still works for me today. Arthur took Dennis under his wing, instructing him how to mow the grass, how to deal with the flowerbeds and all that stuff. Dennis, who's a little deaf and wore a hearing aid, would look at me, shake his head and shrug his shoulders, as if to say that Arthur was driving him nuts. Many's the time I would call after Dennis and get no response. When I walked up to him, he would say, 'Sorry, Alan, I switched off my hearing aid because Arthur was driving me mad.'

Arthur had planted an array of trees around the swimming-pool to protect it from the wind. One evening, there was a knock on the door. Arthur had a solemn look on his face.

'Sir, I've come to report a disaster. A disaster of the highest proportions, sir - a death, sir.'

'What?! Who's dead?'

'Sir, young Dennis has
murdered
a Leylandii.'

'What are you banging on about, Arthur?'

'Come with me, sir, I will show you.'

We walked out to the garden, near the swimming-pool. The trees that had been planted no more than a year earlier had a stake adjacent to them to keep them upright. Apparently, Dennis had used some plastic string to tie the tree to the stake. As the tree trunk grew, the string had cut into the side of the trunk and, according to Arthur, this was murder.

'I told him, sir, that there are special things you can use which expand as the tree grows. But did he listen to me, sir? No, he didn't, sir. He's used plastic string and here is the result of it, sir - murder in the first degree!'

'Will you shut up, Arthur, please. It's a bleedin' tree.'

'It's not a bleedin' tree to me, sir - I watched this thing grow. And now I'm going to have to find you a tree of a similar height, so that it will grow to the same level as the others.'