Be Careful What You Wish For (3 page)

Whether these experiences brought about a sea change in my attitude, or whether I simply started to channel myself better, I always believed I was going to achieve something in life, thinking I was a leader not a follower. Now, at eighteen, it was time to start doing it.

The National Computer Centre invited applications in the local paper and from 200 applicants I got one of twenty places. My parents were thrilled: finally I was knuckling down and showing in their view my true potential. It was a year-long course of education in computer operating, programming and maintenance and also included two work placements.

This shaped the course my immediate life would take. I studied hard, excelled in my two work placements, passed all my exams with distinction.

I was ready for the big wide world.

3

FIRST STEPS INTO THE BIG WORLD

MY FIRST JOB
was at Data Stream International. Fifty candidates had applied for the vacancy and I got it. I was on my way for a long and fruitful career in computing. Or so I thought.

September 1986. I strolled in on my first morning at 7.30 wearing a new double-breasted Prince of Wales check suit from Next. In my mind I looked and felt great. Unfortunately I got off to a bad start. I wore the identical suit to the man that greeted me, Ray Gilman, who was to become a good friend. And I mistook my scruffy boss, Dave Beerman, for a cleaner.

The job was shift operator, working both days and nights providing online information to the City. The most basic part of the job was printing out the information and as the lowest member on the pole you can guess who landed that plum job. I don’t think so! I was destined for much greater things. That attitude made me a target for this team of practical jokers.

My first night shift came along and I walked headlong into disaster. The phone rang and I was told to answer it. An unfriendly voice demanded to know my name and informed me I was speaking to Hugh Kearns. It didn’t mean much to me so I greeted that
with
a curt silence. The voice went on to say that I hadn’t answered the phone appropriately, and it asked to speak to the shift leader, Dave Beerman.

Dave had a brief conversation with this Kearns and when he put the phone down I enquired who that miserable fucker was.

‘You’ve done it now,’ was his swift reply. ‘Hugh is the MD and he hates people who don’t answer the phone properly.’

The others took great delight tormenting me and goaded me throughout the night, insinuating I was in serious trouble.

The following evening there was a letter in my in-tray. It said that due to the unacceptable way I had answered the phone to the MD, the company were terminating my employment at the end of the shift.

All my cocky bravado disappeared in a millisecond. The blood drained out of my body. I asked Dave to help me and he went off in an attempt to rectify the situation, but to no avail.

Great. There I was, unemployed after just three days in the job. I wanted to burst into tears but was too numb to do so. I spent the remainder of the night consoling myself in the print room.

Come the morning I said goodbye to everyone for the last time only to be greeted with hysterical laughter.

The bastards had drafted the letter themselves; it was a complete wind-up.

With the newfound wealth that came with my first job, I acquired a convertible Triumph Spitfire for £750. It was a complete pile of shit. To my dad’s great amusement, on his first inspection the window fell out.

Whilst the job was serious and the work needed to be done, it invariably came second to shenanigans. One particular night we completely overstepped the mark. The underground car park had a
massive
ramp and we amused ourselves by racing trolleys down it. An accident was inevitable. No prizes for guessing who caused it.

I completely lost control of the trolley I was riding and smashed straight into a brand-new Volvo estate owned by none other than the MD, Hugh Kearns.

To make matters worse it was caught on CCTV by the security guard, who usually spent most of his time asleep on the job, except on the evening in question when I smashed into the MD’s car.

As Dave Beerman was the occupant of the other trolley we were forced to give the guard a sizeable bribe in cash and bring him six cans of lager every time we did night shifts in order for him to accidentally erase the security tape.

I may have been having fun at Data Stream, but I also was serious about my career. I wanted to progress and was ambitious and hungry for knowledge. The company hired a freelance computer contractor and when I discovered how much money he was earning I immediately wanted some of that. When I announced my plans to an amused set of colleagues they told me to a man that they had forgotten more than I was ever likely to know, along with a variety of other amusing put-downs – or so they thought.

I spent sixteen months cramming in as much experience as I could. I had come to the conclusion that the more experience I had on my CV, the greater chance I had of going freelance and making some serious money.

With a combination of confidence, bravado and ignorance I landed a job at Thomson Holidays, giving me an extra £4 grand a year. It came in handy, as I was no longer in possession of my car because I had to sell it to pay off a gambling debt after losing £600 in a night-shift card game. You suspect that would put me off gambling for life. Far from it.

The move to Thomson was a bad decision. The job was not for
me
and the people I worked with were unfriendly and boring. Despite that I decided the best course of action was to stick it out for as long as I could so I could further fabricate – sorry – add to my extensive CV in the pursuit of a lucrative freelance computer career.

I was young, focused, full of ambition and I had no intention of wasting time.

My next move was to register myself with several computer recruitment agencies providing them with the embellished CV I would need to secure my first contract as a freelancer. Through – how should I say it? – the embellishment of the truth (or perhaps more truthfully, bullshit), I secured an interview for a contract. The interview consisted of me passing off things I had only read about as work I had done. They certainly must have believed me because I landed a plum job with Chevron Petroleum, earning three times as much as I had at Thomson.

Upon leaving the interview I saw a man holding court. It was their MD Mark Goldberg, someone I would become acquainted with in ten years’ time.

After twenty-two months’ experience I had fast-tracked myself into becoming the youngest freelance computer operative in the UK, with scant knowledge, little foundation and my only real collateral being an unadulterated belief in myself. In fact, I moved on through my early working life flying by the seat of my pants. I had audacity and confidence in spades, and an utter disrespect for authority or protocol.

Having cut my teeth at Chevron I moved swiftly onto my next contract at the Trafalgar House Group, the owners of the famous cruise line Cunard.

Even a little bit of knowledge is an extremely dangerous thing as I was about to discover with catastrophic consequences.

There wasn’t a great deal to get stuck into. Bored, I started reading various operator manuals.

Three days into the job I thought it would be funny to execute a command that would prevent certain terminals in the group accessing the main computer. Initially I thought I would get a few calls from users asking to reactivate their terminal; unfortunately my command had more far-reaching consequences when the whole place went into total meltdown.

I hadn’t shut down a few terminals – I had shut down the entire worldwide network so people working from Mitcham to Mombasa couldn’t access the mainframe of this enormous international company. Undoing my damage wasn’t a major issue, it was the incriminating evidence I left behind.

A smart-arse analyst decided to print out the activity on the operator terminal, which clearly showed someone, notably me, had executed a command to shut the entire network down.

I considered blaming someone else, but there was no one else there to blame so they, with looks of disbelief at my nonsensical actions, terminated my contract after just three days.

I wasn’t too concerned about Trafalgar House, I was more worried about the agency, MSB, who were getting me good work. Fortunately they knew infinitely less about computing than I did so when I scandalously laid the blame on anything other than me, and appeared to sound like I knew what I was talking about, they accepted my explanation and we moved on.

After a number of contracts I decided to take a three-month sabbatical and travelled to America. During my trip I met one of my best friends in the world, Walter Almeida, who looked out for this somewhat green and cocky Limey. Eventually I returned home and resumed working as a freelance computer operator.

But despite doing very well, I had itchy feet. I wanted to progress
my
career quickly and at the advanced age of twenty-two, I decided I wanted a new one. I went to a career analyst on Baker Street to ascertain what else I could do. After a day of tests and evaluation, it emerged I was completely wasted in computing. To my horror it was suggested I should be a salesman. Images of Arthur Daley and Del Boy sprang to mind. I was mortally offended and proceeded to argue that there was no way on God’s earth I was a salesman; I was a computer professional. But no – according to the career analyst, sales was where my natural abilities lay.

My next computing contract unknown to me at the time was to be my last. I was working for British Telecom at a top security site with all the MI5 circuits running through the mainframe.

Working nights again was hard and relatively boring. Well, so I thought until I made the mother of all balls-ups.

Early one morning the site experienced a power blip, which caused the mainframe computer to crash. Numerous attempts to reboot the system later, I ran out of patience and decided to power down the main CPU and restart it.

As soon as I pulled the switch down on the back of the mainframe I knew I had a serious problem. Without call-out engineer expertise everything was irretrievable and the expression ‘get your coat’ was never more appropriate.

I was done with computer contracting. My friend James Wright had set up a company selling mobile phones from an office at his father’s home. It was a small business and the retail explosion in the industry hadn’t yet manifested itself. Within a week I’d done a deal to become his partner. I was taking on a sales role, the very thing three months earlier I said I would never do.

We were selling maybe twenty phones a month, making a profit of around £3,000, which hardly satisfied my ambitions for world domination. I worked tirelessly and educated myself about selling
the
product and technology and then set about expanding the business. We rapidly moved up to selling fifty units a month and turning over £20,000 with £7,500 in profit.

As our company grew we changed the name, rented offices and employed staff. Fairly soon we were up to 150 connections a month, which was about £70,000 turnover with gross profits of £25,000 per month. Our first year’s turnover was in excess of £1.2 million.

We had the makings of a good business, but unfortunately our ambitions were not matched by our business nous. Overheads were becoming excessive and trading fell, which put enormous pressure on us.

James wanted out and took extreme action to make that point. After I had been out securing a sizeable deal I came back to discover he had made a rare excursion to the office, taken all the stock and then used it as leverage to get me to buy him out.

Believing in myself I bought him out, but in the weeks it took to do this, the bank froze our account and the damage to our trading relationships was beyond repair. Six months later I was forced to close the business.

What the hell was I going to do now? I had squandered all of my money and all that was left was what I was standing up in. I cleared out the office the next day, took the remaining stock and sold it for £1,200.

I needed to get away and rethink my life. Despite all my mishaps, I had had a potentially good career in computing and had built the makings of a good business, but through bad luck, bad judgement, youthful impetuosity and stupidity I was now on my arse.

I called my old college friend Edward Penrose, who was working in America. So off I went to share Edward’s apartment in Greenwich Village in New York with dreams of starting new businesses in the
States
, oh yes and to wait tables! Edward said I could stay with him rent-free for as long as I liked. He was working as a waiter in an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side and had arranged for me to have an interview.

I started work the following morning.

My bed at the apartment was a pull-out sofa next to a window that overlooked the street. I was introduced to Edward’s dog, or should I say horse. This dog was a huge beast, unruly and disobedient. It jumped all over you, slobbered and mauled you whenever you were anywhere near it. I also had to take the damn thing for regular walks – or drags, as the thing was so powerful. And as it was New York I had to take plastic bags to pick up the brontosaurus-size shits that came out the horse’s, I mean dog’s, backside.

Whilst I lived in Greenwich Village I had some good times. It was a hive of activity.

I was a regular in a famous place called The Temple Bar on the corner of Lafayette and Broadway. I became friendly with the actor Matt Dillon. He was a very cool guy and part of the Hollywood brat pack. He was a New Yorker and enjoyed living and drinking in the city. We frequently met up, got drunk and chased women. It wasn’t as much fun as it sounded: he was an internationally recognised film star and I was a waiter so no need to guess who got all the girls.

I was not a great waiter: taking orders and serving people was not something I relished. One thing I did learn was never piss off someone who serves you in a restaurant. I saw some pretty unpleasant and disgusting things done to the food of rude and complaining customers.