What You See is What You Get Read online

  In one of the pep talks that Daphne and Brenda gave me, Brenda said that her brother, Adrian Press, would gladly play host and take me around the youth clubs that he went to. ‘You know Adrian,’ Brenda said. ‘You’ve played with him when you’ve been round my mum and dad’s house. You were page boys together at our wedding. It’s not like he’s a stranger. Why don’t you agree to meet up with him and let him introduce you to a bunch of pals?’

  Reluctantly, I went along with this, simply on the basis that at least I knew Adrian as we’d met on a few occasions. First, Adrian took me to Brady Club, off the Mile End Road, where he introduced me to a bunch of guys. I was painfully shy. After the initial niceties and hellos, I ended up feeling like a wallflower as the evening went on.

  This pattern continued for several weeks, if not months, either at Brady Club or Stamford Hill Club, up the road from me. When I think back, I feel a bit sorry for Adrian because I was like baggage he had to drag around with him. Eventually, he sat me down in the cafeteria of Brady Club and told me very nicely that all he could do was introduce me to people. It was up to me if I wanted to take it further and do something about it – he couldn’t keep trying to get me involved if I didn’t want to participate. He wasn’t being an arsehole; he was actually a really nice guy, as he still is to this day. Despite Adrian’s pep talk, my social skills didn’t improve. It was getting to the stage where I’d be making feeble excuses about why I couldn’t meet up with him.

  Inside me was this feeling of wanting to talk to people, wanting to join in with all the joking and larking around, but something was holding me back. I have no idea what it was – I can only put it down to shyness.

  Among the group of friends that Adrian introduced me to were a couple of the boys he went to school with, Tony Kaye and Steve Pomeroy, as well as their friends Malcolm Cross and Geoff Salt. I’d met them quite a few times during various trips to Brady Club or Stamford Hill Club, but had not really taken it any further than the initial ‘Hello, how are you?’

  Then came an amazing breakthrough. We were at Stamford Hill Club when it started to rain and a load of us were invited back to somebody’s flat nearby. They decided to play a game – it was something like imitating TV adverts or making up your own ones. And there I was, stuck, because they were going round, one by one, asking each person to come up with a funny TV advert. The only options for me at that moment were either to get up and run out of the room or finally talk.

  It was soon my turn. There was silence while everyone looked at me in anticipation of what I was going to say – most of them had never heard me speak. The silence seemed to last an hour. Imagine standing on the end of the high diving-board at the swimming-pool when all your mates had jumped off – and now it was your turn.

  Suddenly I spurted out some funny thing I came up with, associated with the advert for Surf washing powder that was running at the time, where housewives were asked what they thought of Surf. My comment was, ‘I don’t like it – it makes my face all scurfy.’

  There was a moment of stunned silence – the kind where you think you’ve just dropped the biggest lead balloon of your life – then, a second later, the whole lot of them just rolled about in hysterics. They looked at me as if to say, ‘Where did you come from? Where have you been?’

  This gave me some encouragement and I continued to tell some funny stories. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that my mum and dad had paid these people to laugh. It was very much a break-the-ice moment and though I couldn’t see why I was so popular all of a sudden, I was.

  I guess that in kids’ circles it goes like that. Suddenly there’s a new kid on the block who’s quite funny and streetwise. There was no stopping me from then on, and I went from this quiet recluse to someone who never stopped talking and larking around.

  Adrian knew something had changed. He said, ‘Wow, what’s happened to you? You seemed to really enjoy yourself there today.’ I’m obviously grateful to him for persevering with me and introducing me to this bunch of friends. From that moment on, Steve Pomeroy, Tony Kaye, Geoff Salt and Malcolm Cross became my pals. They are still my good friends to this very day.

  Steve Pomeroy’s parents ran a lemonade factory in Hackney. It was a fascinating place, specialising in producing lemonade for pubs and for the kosher wedding market. The Pomeroys lived in a grand house in Osbaldeston Road in Clapton. I never really got to know Mr Pomeroy, as unfortunately he died shortly after Steve and I became friends. Steve’s mother was a real character and later in life we had a lot of banter together at her factory.

  Tony Kaye, and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this, was regarded as being from a rather well-to-do family. His father was an importer/trader in fancy goods. They lived in Dunsmure Road, Stamford Hill, considered to be a more opulent part of the neighbourhood.

  Whenever Geoff and I were together, no one would believe his name was Salt and my name was Sugar. People would think we were taking the piss. Geoff lived at Finsbury Park. His father worked in the fashion industry and his mother was a rather lovely, dignified, serious lady. Geoff was considered a bit of a renegade by his parents, whereas his elder brother Steven was far more of a conformist. Geoff’s father would often be giving him a load of stick and moaning at him.

  Malcolm Cross lived in Hackney with his mum and dad and four brothers. I would say that his family was most like ours financially. Malcolm was a bit older than the rest of us and was the first to get his driving licence. Naturally, he became the chauffeur for the group.

  The friendship blossomed amongst the five of us, and we spent most of our time at Stamford Hill Club and one another’s houses. Tony Kaye’s mum and dad used to have frequent holidays, thus freeing up their home for us to invade. We spent many a weekend there, playing cards and frolicking around. This era, when I was in my mid-teens, seemed to last a lifetime. It was only a couple of years, but quite a lot was happening. I was growing at a fast rate of knots, not just physically, but also socially. I progressed from messing around at the youth club to going to nightclubs such as the Scene and Le Kilt, as well as various other establishments scattered around the West End. We weren’t really into the mod scene – we all wore sharp suits and listened to the latest music, but we didn’t take it as seriously as some who considered themselves to be the bee’s knees in fashion and entertainment. There were ‘tier one’ people, the likes of whom used to hang around with characters such as Marc Bolan, who also came from our area. And then there was us – second division – who were not quite the top scene, if you get my drift. Nevertheless, we didn’t do too badly.

  *

  While all this growing up was going on, I started studying for my GCE O Levels. English was my worst subject. Sure I could bunny off of scratch and was always called to host debates or enter into discussions, but when it came to the written word, my spelling was atrocious. I have no idea why; I still have this mental block as far as spelling is concerned. All I can say is, thank goodness for the spellchecker.

  My father had a theory that my spelling was bad because I didn’t read enough. But I have another theory: there’s something in this brain of mine that will just not sign on to spelling or remembering a person’s name. If you introduce me to a new person and say, ‘This is Fred,’ within five seconds I can’t tell you their name. I have to meet a person and call them by their name loads of times before it sinks in.

  Because of my poor spelling, any exam I took was immediately marked down, so I never excelled at English. By the fifth form, I was in the top stream (5-1) for maths, chemistry, physics, etc., but when it came to English I was relegated to 5-2. However, the bottom stream curriculum seemed to be a bit more interesting – less grammar and more practical lessons. One of the topics discussed was advertising, and for once I stopped looking out of the window and paid attention. We were asked to analyse the launch of a moisturiser called Cream of Cactus: why pick this name? What was the advertiser getting at in the copy?

  It seemed obvious to me. The
cactus is known to exist in the hot desert and remain moist inside. I explained the analogy and what the advertiser was up to and got full marks on my essay, albeit with the caveat ‘Shame about the spelling, Sugar.’

  The subjects I enjoyed most were science and engineering. Sometimes I would bump into Mr Harris, the headmaster, walking through the corridor. He would look up and say something like, ‘Hello, Sugar. How are you doing in the commerce and economics division?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m in science and engineering 5-1,’ I’d say.

  ‘No, no, no, surely you’re in commerce and economics.’

  ‘No, sir, science and engineering 5-1.’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no . . .’ And he would wander off, shaking his head.

  It seemed that Mr Harris had it in his brain that that’s where I should be, despite my passion for chemistry, physics, metalwork and technical drawing.

  Mathematics, on the other hand, was not one of my greatest talents. It is now, but back then I wasn’t interested. I used to muck about in class. We had a weirdo teacher we called Theta Grant because of the strange way he would say and write the Greek symbol theta on the blackboard. This made us all laugh, but this fellow was a bit of a nutter – he had a violent temper – so we made sure he didn’t see us laugh at him. We only called him Theta behind his back.

  He pulled no punches, this chap. If he thought you were a dunce, he’d sit you at the back of the class, while the bright kids sat in the front row. Needless to say, I was at the back, right by the window, watching the football outside. A total waste, when I think back.

  Nowadays, I try to explain to young people that when you’re at school, you may think you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you don’t. Your biggest problem is whether you’re going to get those new trainers or that your mobile or iPod needs charging. The reality is that you have no worries, nothing to concern yourself with. And one day, when you get into the real world of work and marriage and life in general, you might look back and remember the words of this old fart.

  I then go on to say, ‘The fact of the matter is, the law says you have to go to school. Well, while you’re there, you might as well suck in every bit of information the teachers want to give you, as it’s all free. Don’t mess around like I did.’

  Of course, this lecture falls on deaf ears. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have made this little speech during my various visits to schools and other institutions. But it is so true. I wasted my school days messing about, being uninterested, being a bit of a joker in class, only to cop on later in life. This was particularly true in French. I didn’t bother with it at school, only to find myself, years later, sitting like a dummy in business meetings, not knowing what was going on. And as anyone who knows me will attest, for me not to know what’s going on is very frustrating.

  I wasn’t considered a contender for a GCE pass in maths, but I knew I had to pass it to go forward to the next level of education – maths GCE was mandatory. To make matters worse, at mid-term we were going to have to step up a gear and move on to calculus, a very tough area of mathematics. I knew I would have absolutely no chance of passing the maths GCE unless I understood calculus.

  Here’s an annoying thing: to cut a long story short, I set my mind to it and, trust me when I tell you that this maths dummkopf, who’d been sitting at the back of the class for years, suddenly become the guru of calculus. Some of the boffs sitting in the front row couldn’t keep up with me and, would you believe, would ask me, ‘Sugar, can you tell me how to differentiate this quadratic equation? I’m getting a bit confused on the integral of this, that or the other.’

  When I finally sat the GCE O Level, I passed! Not with a high grade, but a pass nonetheless. Theta Grant could not understand what had happened to me. When I returned to school the next term, he was over the moon. ‘Congratulations, Mister Sugar,’ he said. ‘I cannot believe it. Wonderful.’

  What’s annoying about this is that I had had it in me all along, but had wasted years at school because I couldn’t be bothered. Try telling this story to youngsters these days. The following term I went on to do applied maths. I sailed through that and got a good grade.

  In trying to compensate for my shortcomings in English, there was a suggestion that taking English literature as one of my GCEs would be a good move. We had to study Twelfth Night and the school put on a production of the play, for which I auditioned. Stupidly, I applied for the part of Orsino – effectively the leading role. On reflection, I’m pleased I never got it.

  I learned act one, scene one for the audition, but was upstaged by a budding Sir John Gielgud. As a consolation, I was given the part of Curio, assistant to the king. From what I remember, we performed in front of a load of visiting dignitaries in the school’s grand hall, and it went down very well – not that my few lines had anything to do with that.

  I also joined the school’s Senior Science Society as the lower-sixth representative. The purpose of the society was to inform pupils throughout the school about the latest scientific innovations and developments. Unfortunately, the society’s chairman was a pompous twit who turned out not to be the brightest star in the sky. He was clutching on to low grades in GCE chemistry and physics, trying to go on to achieve his A Levels, but if you listened to all his bullshit, you would think you were taking part in the Manhattan Project. I found myself arguing with this chairman all the time, basically because he was a prat. Sorry, but there’s no other way to explain it. You’ve probably got the impression that anybody whom I don’t agree with I automatically call a tosser or a prat – I know that’s how it may come across at the moment – but trust me, he was a double-barrelled prat. I could not take any more of him, so I duly resigned and left him to find a new recruit. Was this the first of many boardroom conflicts? Well, maybe.

  *

  My education took place twelve years after Daphne’s and Derek’s, so my parents were in a twelve-year time warp. They expected their children to start contributing financially to the running of the home when they reached an age suitable for employment. Just as soon as Shirley, Derek and Daphne were earning money, they had to part with some of it to go towards housekeeping. This was quite normal in those days.

  Then I came along and was earning more money on the side with my various ventures than I would have done if I’d left school at fifteen and worked in a factory. I was deemed to be an investment by my parents. They let me stay on at school to better myself and become something; not just a factory worker. As if I needed them to tell me that! I was already bunging Mum the odd few quid here and there from my various enterprises, so park that aspect to one side. Nevertheless, as far as they were concerned, there needed to be a justification for why I was staying on at school.

  They’d ask, ‘What are you going to be? What are you going to do? What do all these exams make you into? A doctor? A lawyer? An accountant?’

  My answer was that I wanted to do something in the science professions. As far as my mother and father were concerned, that meant maybe a chemist or a pharmacist. They wouldn’t have even thought about the job of a researcher (who doesn’t actually work in a shop dispensing pills) or somebody inventing something in a high-technology industry.

  You have to sympathise with their outlook on life and employment. Understandably, it came as a great disappointment to them when I told them, halfway through studying for A Levels, that I was going to jack it in. I made the decision shortly after my return from the summer holidays, a week or so into the upper-sixth. They wanted to know: ‘Why did you bother to get these GCEs? What are you going to do now?’

  This was further aggravated by Shirley’s husband Harold, who had a weird sense of humour and would try to capitalise on the dilemma facing me and my parents over choosing a career. He famously interjected once by saying, ‘Why are you bothering? Become a dustman – they pay them loads of money these days.’ This little chant of Harold’s was one he would repeat at certain milestones in my life – not in a nasty w
ay, I hasten to add, but to remind himself of what he’d said so many years earlier.

  My reason for leaving school was that my best friends were taking on jobs. Malcolm was working in a radio and TV store as a television engineer. Funnily enough this store was opposite Mr Allen’s, and we’d often meet each other on Saturdays and discuss what we were getting up to that night. Geoff was trying to pursue a career in the fashion industry on the administration and sales side. Steve was working for his parents’ firm, making lemonade. And Tony – well, sorry, but he was just a rich man’s son. He was talking about going to Africa to do some goody-goody work, but if you ask me, it was to bunk off getting a real job. They all had cars except me. So, in summary, the reason for me leaving school was to get a job with wheels.

  I went to see the headmaster to tell him about my decision. Mr Harris wasn’t happy at all. He felt I had the potential to stay on and complete the A Level courses. Nevertheless, he accepted my decision and pointed me in the direction of the careers officer who informed me of the opportunities available in technology. Apparently, being a computer programmer was becoming very popular and he arranged for me to take IBM’s aptitude test – a way of evaluating if a candidate had what it takes to be a programmer. Thinking of this now puts a smile on my face, having employed hundreds of computer programmers in my lifetime and watched them sitting around in their sandals and jeans flicking elastic bands at each other.

  I went along to IBM’s offices in Wigmore Street where the staff were very polite. Once we’d finished our exam papers, they sent us off to have lunch in the canteen while they marked them. They let the people who were clearly of no interest to them go and I was one of those people.

  I also sat a similar exam at ICL in Putney. Once again, I got the Dear John letter. Obviously I wasn’t cut out for computer programming.

  Funny how things work out. Twenty-four years later I entered into a Licensing Agreement with IBM which resulted in me taking 30 per cent of the European personal computer market away from them. And, please excuse my boast, I now own IBM’s European headquarters building on London’s South Bank, which I bought for £112 million. Anyway, moving on . . .