I have to admit that I am not the easiest person to employ and that is why for many years now I have run my own businesses. I am not the best timekeeper in the world and am often described as not so much laid back as comatose. A friend once sent me a card paraphrasing Kipling, it said, "If you can keep your head whilst all around lose theirs, you probably don't understand how bad the situation is!" He could have had a point. The great corporate machine is not for me but one thing I do really miss with a passion is "the business expense account!"
Now being in sports marketing and also having an interest in corporate entertainment, leisure and travel I am sadly aware that companies expense budgets are not as they used to be in the good old days of the 1970's and early 1980's before Margaret Thatcher introduced pragmatism into the marketplace. In those halcyon times not only was I a Young Turk but I worked for men of vision, men who were not afraid to manipulate an expense sheet and squeeze a claim until it squeaked.
The first of these, Bill Tree, was a man to whom I owe a great deal. He was to mentor me in both business and life, I was a youngster from a mining village and he taught me about food and wine and how to be confident in any company. I was two years out of college and walked out on my job in book sales after a series of fallouts with a particularly nasty bully of a manager. Jobless, I spotted an ad for a Sales and Marketing Representative for a Containerised Shipping Company. I applied and as luck would have it was offered an interview at a hotel about three miles from where I lived. I spent the morning preparing for this important interview by watching England bat against Australia in the Test Match at Lords and then walked, because my company car went west with my resignation, to my appointment. With no knowledge of shipping whatsoever and just a couple of years work experience behind me my prospects were not great.
Bill was Marketing Director of the company and he interviewed me along with the MD a lovely gentle man in his sixties called Andy Holding. I felt that it went pretty well but I'm not sure that I would have been offered the post if Bill hadn't at the end asked, if by any chance I knew the latest score in the Test Match. An hour later having dissected John Edrich's century and the promising, frighteningly fast but erratic bowling of Australia's Jeff Thomson and England's prospects for their winter tour to the West Indies I had the job.
It turned out that Bill was a cricket fanatic and both he and his brother Jim who was General Manager of the company were exceptional players. The company was expanding rapidly and after a relatively short time working in Liverpool I was very swiftly promoted to Regional Manager for the North East with my own office and staff in Leeds. Not long after taking this post I got a phone call from Jim Tree. His tone was serious "Bill's asked me to ring you. It's about your expenses," he said. Immediately I assumed that I had overstepped the mark and then he added "They're not high enough. You're making the rest of us look bad. Take Dee out more." He never had to tell me again.
For several years I entertained clients royally at Headingley and Old Trafford, at York and Chester Races, at Elland Road and Anfield before sadly the company closed due to its Middle Eastern owners withdrawing their funds with the escalation of the troubles in their native Lebanon.
My wife and I then moved to live in Bath and I came under the wing of an even greater artist in the field of business expense sheet manipulation. I was Regional Sales Manager and Andrew was my immediate superior. He would visit us in Bath and Dee and myself would join him for dinner at 'The Hole in the Wall' in George Street and 'Harvey's' in Whiteladies Road Bristol, establishments that even twenty years ago cost 50 per head, you may have noticed the lack of an actual client on these occasions but both Andrew and myself felt that they would only be intrusive.
The company we worked for was an early pioneer of the fitted appliance market. A huge German conglomerate, they threw money at the UK Division in a successful attempt to quickly establish themselves as a market leader. Expense claims that now would get laughed out of court wafted their way over the North Sea to be passed without quibble. Petrol used to be bought with Shell cards and no one ever checked mileage against purchases. Rumour has it that one salesman in deepest Wales did a deal with his local garage and actually bought his wife a car over a period of time on his petrol card. We took Dealers on trips up the Nile and to Las Vegas. We hired out the Orient Express and whilst with them I even flew on Concorde and have the bed socks to prove it. We organised massive exhibitions and product launches. On one such occasion at a top hotel in Stratford upon Avon we were encouraged to invite wives and girlfriends. Over a three day period we were close to drinking the establishment dry. We had corporate suits to wear for this event and Andrew liked his so much that he ordered two.
I remember those men of vision with great fondness and reflect upon those happy times when binge drinking was not frowned upon but was just called a business lunch. As I listen to the doom and gloom on radio from Mr Gordon Brown about the credit crunch and ring out my company tea bag for its fifth outing of the day I regret that the Golden Age' of frivolous spending in the name of commerce may never be seen again.
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