The CV by Alan Sugar

Author:Alan Sugar [Sugar, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780230760264
Published: 2013-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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