The CV (3 page)

Once I’d got the equipment and converted my dad’s workshop (the spare bedroom) into a darkroom by putting a blanket across the window and shutting the door, I set about finding customers. It struck me that many of our neighbours had kids and grandchildren, so I decided to knock on people’s doors and ask them if they’d like me to photograph the children on a ‘no obligation’ basis – a no-brainer, as you can imagine. ‘Sure,’ they invariably replied. I took the precaution of writing ‘PROOF’ on the corner of the photos
in biro and presented them to the parents and grandparents who, of course, loved them.

‘What’s this word “proof”?’ they would say. ‘Can’t I have one without that on it?’

‘Well, that’s a rough example. If you want a final, good-quality one, I’ll print you off a large one for half a crown.’

That was it! I was at the races. It was pictures of children and grandchildren for the next few months.

While on the subject of photography, one of the young lads I’d seen around was soon to be Bar Mitzvah’d and, as his mum and dad couldn’t afford much, I offered to take the Bar Mitzvah photographs.

Bloody hell, what a risk that was! When I got to the venue, I found myself taking pictures of adults and doing group photos. Only then did it dawn on me: these people are expecting memorable photographs, pictures they’ll frame and treasure for the rest of their lives. I thought to myself, ‘What have I done? What am I doing here?’ Thankfully, it came off quite well in the end. I can’t remember what I charged but I certainly undercut the professional photographer.

Based on that event, I decided to professionalise myself. I went to a local printer’s, Austin Press, who made me a rubber stamp: ‘
Photographed by
ALAN SUGAR – Phone: UPP 7875’. Even as I tell this story, I can see my mum smiling and shrugging her shoulders and my dad still shaking his head.

1959 – 1963: Enterprise activities

At school, photography was becoming a fashionable hobby and we had a photographic society whose members included one of the more financially fortunate pupils, a posh kid who used to hold court. His dad owned a shop and everybody looked up to him as if his shit didn’t stink.

When I showed my photographs, he’d sneer at them and look down on me as a second-class photographer. On one occasion, I showed him some negatives I’d developed myself. He observed some smear marks on them and announced haughtily, in front of the society, ‘Oh, Sugar, it seems that you dry your negatives by farting on them.’ You can imagine the laughter.

My next scheme wiped the smile off his face, in more ways than one. At that time, he used to be the supplier of photographic materials to the kids and the teachers. Now, at the rear of Mr Allen’s shop there was a small film-processing factory. I’d occasionally go and see how the developing process worked and noticed that they discarded the empty 35mm cartridge cases. I wondered what could be done with these seemingly useless items, but at the time nothing came to mind. Until one day I went into the ex-army shop on Chatsworth Road in Hackney. Ex-army stores originally sold second-hand uniforms, boots and other surplus army supplies, but the availability of this stuff diminished in the post-war years, so they extended their stock to
anything
surplus. I went to buy a pair of army boots (a fashion statement at that time) and noticed some large, round cans that looked like something you would store film in – the type of film you’d see on a cinema projector. I asked the fellow what was in the cans and he told me he’d bought a job lot of unexposed Ilford FP3 film, as used by film studios for the making of black-and-white movies. FP3 was also sold in photographic stores as black-and-white transparency film for around 5s 1d for a 20-exposure roll and 6s 10d for a 36-exposure roll. Now here I was in the ex-army store, with reels and reels of this stuff, each reel with hundreds of yards of film on it, the very same film you could buy in the photographic shops, but in bulk. The vision of the empty 35mm cartridges came out of my memory bank and I asked the man how much he wanted for a reel.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ he asked. ‘Who do you think you are – Hitchcock?’

‘Never mind that, mate, how much for a reel?’ I persisted.

He was bright, because before he gave a price, he wanted to know what I had in mind for it, in case he was missing a trick. There must have been fifty cans there, so who knows how much he paid for them. I bet he bought them for the scrap value of the metal cans.

‘How much do you want to pay?’ he said.

I looked at the can. The label indicated 500 yards of film inside. I knew from watching the process at the development factory that a 36-exposure film, out of its cartridge, was about two yards long. If I sold the film to the punters and undercut the shops by, say, 50 per cent, it would mean that I’d have to charge about three bob for a 36-exposure film. I quickly worked out that 250 x 3s came to £37 10s.

‘I’ll give you five quid for one can,’ I said. After a bit of haggling, the bloke accepted. He was intrigued about what I was going to do with it. Now I had to set up a production line. Although I’d converted my dad’s workshop into a darkroom, there was still light coming around the edges of the blanket over the window and around the door frame. This was good enough for developing prints on photographic paper, but not good enough for playing with unexposed film.

My second darkroom was my bed. Under the bedcovers, I’d open the developing tank, take the undeveloped exposed film out of its cartridge, thread the film on to the tank spool and then put the lid on the tank, ready for the developer fluid to be poured in. I went back under the covers for this bulk film operation. With a pair of scissors and the wooden yardstick my dad used for tailoring, I measured off and cut the film into two-yard lengths from the bulk reel. The whole operation was risky because if any light got in, I could expose the whole spool and that’d be a fiver down the drain. Once cut, I loaded the film into one of the discarded empty 35mm cartridges. I tried to be selective and take only those that had an original Ilford FP3 label on them, but I had to accept what was available. If I loaded the film into a cartridge with an FP3 label, it would be an easier sell; if I had to use an empty Kodak cartridge, you can imagine it would take a bit of explaining as to why the film inside was FP3.

In those days there were no inkjet printers or photocopiers to run off labels. Instead, I got some kid at school to use the library typewriter to type out ‘ILFORD FP3 36 EXP’ over and over on a sheet of A4 paper, cut the words out and glue them on to the non-Ilford cartridges using LePages glue. In exchange, I gave him some film, so he was happy as Larry.

Word spread like wildfire at school: ‘Hey, Sugar’s got 36 EXP FP3 for three bob!’ At first, I had to overcome the suspicion that they’d fallen off the back of a lorry, a rumour put about by the posh tosser. That was easy to dispel because when you looked at the end product you could see it wasn’t packaged in the same way as retail film. I was soon getting orders from the kids, the kids’ parents and the teachers. Like all products, it was accepted with scepticism at first, but eventually they realised it was okay. In fact, my generous length of two yards gave them forty-odd exposures.

The posh tosser didn’t give up. After his suggestion that the stuff was nicked had backfired, he then said the film was out-of-date and thus inferior. I killed that one off by offering a money-back guarantee.

This exercise had a twofold benefit. Firstly, I made some money and saw how cutting prices generates sales. But I also learned a valuable lesson about what happens when someone encroaches upon the territory of the so-called elite, be it disturbing their business or upsetting what they perceive to be their special rights. They go into arsehole mode and use rather sneaky and spiteful tactics.

1963 – 1967: Early career

I started looking for another job and saw a promising newspaper advert for a trainee cost accountant with a statistics background. The firm was Richard Thomas & Baldwins, an iron and steel manufacturer located on the corner of Gower Street and Euston Road.

The first obstacle I had to overcome was telling my father I was leaving my Civil Service job. His mentality was that you didn’t leave your job. You worked for a company and you got ‘grandfathered in’ – for ever. He wasn’t happy that I was flipping jobs so quickly, but I brought him round by explaining that I’d now attained experience in statistics which, if I got this new job, would eventually allow me to become a qualified cost accountant.

I did get the job and the pay was a bit more, about £10 or £11 a week. I was planted in a small office with ten much older men, all of whom were either qualified or trying to qualify as cost accountants. These guys ended up doing me the biggest favour of my life, as I’ll explain shortly.

The function of this department was to produce a weekly report on the output of the factory in Wales for the directors. My job was to get the daily output figures from the blast furnace and put this information into a format which would become part of the directors’ report. Each day, a chap called Alun, who had a strong Welsh accent, used to phone me from the factory and read me the output figures.

The lads in the department warmed to me because I was forever messing around and telling a few jokes here and there. One of the things I did was put on a Welsh accent whenever I spoke to Alun at the plant. One day he called up and said, ‘Hello, is that you, Alan?’

I replied in a Welsh accent, ‘Yes, it is me, Alun – this is also Alan.’

‘Where has that Welsh accent come from?’ he asked.

I explained to him that when in Rome, you do as the Romans. I said it was to show my devotion to the firm, and that having dealt with so many Welsh people within the company, a bit of the accent had rubbed off on me. Anyway, I told him not to let it bother him and to carry on giving me the daily figures.

He was obviously a bit thick. ‘Righto, Alan,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pig iron, 17.4 tons.’

‘Righto, Alun. Pig iron, 17.4 tons.’

‘Sinter, 2.6 tons.’

‘Righto, 2.6 tons, sinter. Thank you, Alun,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’

‘Hang on, don’t you want to hear about the slag?’

I waited a moment, raised my voice and said, ‘Alun, I’m fed up listening to you moan about your wife.’

As the words came out of my mouth, I knew I was in trouble.

He went bloody mad. ‘How dare you talk about my wife like that? I’ll have you know I’ve been married to Glynis for eight years. She’s a wonderful lady. You have no right to call her that. Admittedly, we have no children at the moment . . .’ and he carried on ranting and raving. ‘I’m going to complain about you, speaking in a Welsh accent and insulting my wife . . .’

‘It’s a joke, it’s a joke . . .’

‘You London spivs, you’re all the bloody same. You don’t know what life is like down here in Wales . . .’

‘Okay, son, okay, don’t worry, speak to you tomorrow, see you.’

My little joke flew around the office. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for word to get back to the powers that be and I was bang in trouble. I was told that the chief accountant had received a complaint and I was to report to his office the next morning.

I prepared a little speech overnight explaining that it was just a joke and that we East End boys, well, we make jokes like this. It wasn’t meant in any nasty way; it’s just what we chirpy chappies do.

I knocked on the boss’s door at nine o’clock and he told me to come in. It was a bit like standing in front of your dad and knowing he’s going to tell you off for doing something naughty, but realising that he’s struggling not to laugh. Such was the demeanour of Mr Jones, the chief accountant, and I suppose I must have picked up on this. The nervous feeling in my stomach subsided and I felt a bit more relaxed.

He said to me, ‘Mr Sugar, I’ve had a complaint from the plant.’

Blow me down, I did it again. In the corner of his room was a large rubber plant. I pointed to it and said, ‘Haven’t you been watering it, sir?’

He was not amused and launched into a tirade. ‘To get on in this firm, you have to stop being a joker. This is a serious business. You’ve upset one of the people down in the plant. You’ve got to understand that these people are different from Londoners. They take things very seriously down there and you’ve insulted the gentleman and his wife.’