Chapter 11: Doing the Business

I found the attitude of the business manager and the PA's to my description of what Gerard would have to do in Wales strangely libertarian, but we should not be deceived. They like to be who you want them to be in any given situation and they were doing that to me because that is what they do. If I had said to them, "Right, let's take down Parliament in a bloody revolution, what do you reckon?" they would have said, "Oh, that sounds exciting Craig." "Are you going to be there?" "Oh, absolutely." Yes, they would, but then their job was merely to please me. On any level.

Gerard Braughn is the chairman of at least five multi-million pound corporations. We are not talking about someone who is the head of a business. We are talking about someone who is the head of a variety of businesses, and big ones and he is surrounded by advisors who will agree with anything he says.

"Today we are all going to jump off a cliff, en masse."

"Why that's a jolly good idea, Gerard."

I am not saying that they would not rebel under certain circumstances but I would imagine that their rebellion does not go as far as to stop him taking advantage of them when he wants. So, how far he would have to go for them to turn around and say, "you're a pig" and walk away, I really do not know. I almost wonder whether the worse he is, the more excited they are. The fact that my PA even knew about such things as gimp masks does beg the question that there was more than merely a bourgeois upbringing at work. They found things funny that I did not but they also laughed at some of the same things as me. I wondered exactly how seriously I should take anything they said at all. A business meeting was more like a chat in a cocktail bar to them and this might be why British business is in such a shabby state. If you keep saying that someone is doing great stuff and preventing anyone who is going to criticise them from getting anywhere near them, they become unaware that they have, in fact, been rubbish for over twenty years. "It's a pay cheque, Jack. You know what I mean?"

The Business Manager was absolutely thrilled at my behaviour at every step of the way, but she saw in me a potential businessman. I think that so rigid is their belief in the idea that the strong survive and the weak do not, that a woman like her, for all her non-aggressive behaviour, for all her succinct professional and carefully considered discussions with me, if I suddenly became more powerful than Gerard, she would jump ship overnight.

Obviously, I had been set up in a situation where I had nothing to lose, so my attitude when acquiring money for his estate was a tad more cavalier then it would have been if I depended on it for my next job. I think when people need something, they are spectacularly lacking in flair in their ability to get it because flair kind of implies risk taking. Flair implies that you are not taking it all seriously enough, that you are being a bit showy and a bit mad and you are not sensible enough to have the job. Play the safe route, wear a suit, sit down and be very, very bloody goddamn humble. Well, in this environment I was not going to be like that in anyone's company.

So, I had to go with her, to the head of Landrover UK, to their headquarters in North Yorkshire and I had to get two thousand pounds out of them to pay towards the financing of the polo club ball. In return, they would get a massive billboard, with Landrover UK written on it, which would have pride of place in the arena while the polo match was going on. That was one of my jobs, in order to raise money. Righty ho, I drove off in one of the Range Rovers, which had been purchased from that particular depot. They either sell or give Gerard all of his cars every so many months, at one hundred thousand pounds a piece. Landrover UK are still responsible for the Range Rover. There were rows and rows and rows and rows of hundred thousand pound Range Rovers in this forecourt, all black. You will not see car sales places like this very often. I think the cheapest vehicle was eighty thousand pounds. Everything else was around one hundred thousand and I even noticed some of the Range Rovers marked at a hundred and fifty thousand; more expensive than his helicopter.

I walked into this corporate kingdom, all open plan offices, glass, all sort of workers busying themselves. It was a massive showroom, an obvious retail outlet for the super-rich. You would not find every Tom, Dick or Harry walking into this. It was on an industrial estate tucked well away from the High Street. I had a meeting with the head of this plant. No company is any one country's domain any more and Landrover is what is left of Rover that has not been sold to the Germans and various others. There is no British ownership of Landrover any more, except for this final last bastion of it in Landrover UK plc.

They took me up to another boardroom and sat me down. I was wearing a bright green, check jacket and a bowler hat. These were the sorts of clothes you would not wear to such a meeting unless you had nothing to lose. I waited in a plush area with a very nice film with information about Landrover running, like some extended horrific advertisement. Then I was called up and I walked in. There was a bloke who I would say was about the same age as me, vastly overweight, in a very expensive suit. He had an assistant who was about ten years younger than me, dressed in exactly the same suit, but thin. Not for long, I thought. They will soon have you fattened up. Of course, they were briefed about why I was there, that I was doing Gerard's job. They were hard businessmen so they were going to bloody put me through it. They were not going to be impressed because I had to learn what business was really all about. As soon as I walked in they gave me the sort of look that, in normal circumstances, would have made me think, 'Fuck you, I'm out of here.' That is not what business is about, though, and I had been warned about this by the Business Manager.

'You have got to be careful here, Craig,' she said. 'This is like proper big boys stuff here. Don't be intimidated by them. They will try and intimidate you. Don't have a cap-touching attitude towards them. You are essentially trying to prove to them that they need you more than you need them. You must dominate them, Craig. You must utterly dominate them. If you don't, they will think you are weak and you won't get a penny. Now, although I've said we need two thousand, I'm not expecting more than eight hundred out of them, to be honest with you. If we leave with anything at all I'll be really pleased with what you've done...'

She was very different to Redman in that she wanted me to do well, but this is the nature of her particular brand of capitalism. Hers is not exclusive. Everyone is welcome to become a capitalist and if they are good at it, it does not matter what the origins of that person, the colour of their skin, gender. You can all go for it but only some people can get it.

However much this business manager believed everyone should have a stab at being rich, it was quite obvious that the easiest way to get rich was to have more money than anybody else to begin with. So her thinking was deeply flawed. To her, it was a gladiatorial ring. That was where it is meted out and if you win, it does not matter whether you are a former slave or a former Caesar - you have won! You therefore have the right to all the spoils of that victory. No-one is not allowed to take part. I think she was quite thrilled that someone like me was going into that environment where someone like me would not normally go.

'These people are not going to be pleasant,' she said.

'You have got to remember that I hate that,' I said, 'because I think friendliness is very bloody important.'

'This is not going to be "Aren't we all friends!" This is business, Craig.'

Even though she was not unfriendly, she, like the helicopter pilot, had been programmed to believe that this is the natural way for human society to be organised. It was a shame, because I think that, underneath, she was a very lovely person but did not realise the damage her attitude was causing.

So, we went into this meeting. They sat down and, of course, they went straight for the jugular. Remember, everybody, that the cameras were on all of this, not missing a second. Two to three cameras were in use at any one time, each worth fifty thousand pounds.

'So, what's so special about you then?'

'Nothing,' I said.

'Why do you think we should give you any money at all then?'

'Well,' I said, 'you'd be an idiot not to.'

'What?'

'On film?' I said. 'Not giving me any money? You're an idiot if you don't. I've gotcha! And I've gotcha rather unfairly, because under normal circumstances there would not be an Armada film crew here, so this is not reality and it is not natural. You will not behave as you would normally, so it is rigged, but it is rigged in your favour if you want it to be. As a result of this camera crew, you will get more publicity, you will get publicity worth more than two bloody grand, which, to be honest, is a pitifully small amount of money by anyone's standards, especially when you've got cars in the lot worth one hundred and fifty thousand.'

He turned round to me.

'I'm impressed,' he said, 'you've obviously got a lot to say. We'll come to that in a minute, but I want to ask you a question, Craig.'

'What's that?'

'How much do you think we make in profit on every hundred thousand pound Range Rover?'

'More than two thousand pounds, mate.'

'That's not true,' he said.

'Really?' I said. 'How much profit do you make in a one hundred thousand pound car?'

'A prestige vehicle like that?' he said. 'We'd be lucky if we made fifteen hundred pound profit.'

'You what?' I said. 'Where the hell is the other ninety-eight thousand, five hundred going?'

'Well,' he said, 'it's a very costly business...'

'You're being ripped off!' I said.

'Sorry?'

'You're being ripped off by someone! Hang on, stop! You are trying to convince me and the British public that on a one hundred thousand pound car you make fifteen hundred pound profit? So therefore the whole turnover of this business is so low that you cannot afford to give this polo club ball two thousand pounds? That it's a massive chunk of your gross profit here, that it would... What? What would it do if you gave us two thousand pounds? You'd be under threat of losing your job?'

'Quite so.'

'Can you ring your boss now?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Who's your boss?'

'Well,' he said, 'the head of Landrover UK.'

'That's your line manager?'

'Yeah.'

'You are that far up? And you are going to get the sack over this? You are being abused, mate! People like you never believed in the Trades Union system and because you ain't got one you're living in penury.'

Was he buggery! But I was not going to let him think that I thought that he was lying!

'Get him on the phone now. I'm disgusted.'

'I can't do that,' he said.

'Well,' I said, 'you'd better get him on the phone now, or we're pulling out and it's all on film and he's going to look like a jackass.'

So, he picked the phone up and he started ringing it and then he put the phone down again.

'All right,' he said, 'you are clever.'

'Clever about what? I'm being genuine.'

'I know,' he said. 'I like you...'

'No,' I said. 'I'm being genuine!'

'So, what makes you so special apart from the fact that I am now considering giving you any money at all?'

'Well,' I said, 'I'm really quite surprised. I'm learning so much that I didn't know before and I am really wondering what I should believe. The whole world's been twisted inside out for me. To be quite frank, I think that you are all living in some kind of insane situation that you've lost control of. That you should even be bickering over such a small sum of money when you know what the stakes are. I'll tell you why you should give us the money,' I said, 'not only am I driving around in one of your cars and being copiously filmed from the inside and from the outside and you are getting free advertising already and you ain't paid us a goddamned penny! Quite apart from that, my mate Carrot is driving a Range Rover in Wales, with your bloody best and most expensive customer in it. You've got Range Rovers all over the goddamned place. It's like a bad day on an episode of The Professionals, mate! And you haven't given us a goddamned penny! And now you're going, "ooh, I don't know if I'll give you any money..." You're an idiot and as for your mate there, he ain't said nothing yet. Look, to be quite frank with you, you owe me already, but I'll let you off lightly, because I've got an even better proposition for you.'

'What's that?' he said.

'I want you to turn all of your industrial base away from the petro-chemical industry, and then you will have made goddamned history. Because you will be forgotten otherwise. No-one will remember the word 'Landrover' in a thousand years time. It will be meaningless. But if Landrover UK were the first car production company to turn out an affordable engine that ran on something other than petrol, Landrover would be bigger than it was during the Second World War, and let's face it, you got a lot of good press out of WW2, didn't you? Landrover was the company that saved the Western world, wasn't it? All the little kids of my generation grew up thinking Landrovers were just about the most complete vehicles on the planet. You had the same attitude to Landrover that Hitler had to the Volkswagen. What is this? The whole bloody world goes to war over a car competition? This is ridiculous! But, if you were to herald the new industrial revolution and you had people driving around in Landrovers that hardly made a sound, that were powered by electricity up to a certain mile per hour and after that by hemp seed oil or water power, and that there were no emissions at all, and you were selling it for a price that everyone could afford...? Your competitors would have to jump in and swim or bugger off. There would not be any other company on the planet to compete with you.'

'I think I'd better get on the phone to the boss,' he said. He rung up, I swear to God, this is all on film, he talked to someone on the other end.

'Yeah, yeah, all right,' he said, putting the phone down again. 'He's not around at the moment, he's in Nepal.'

'That's a great shame,' I said. 'Can't you get in touch with him?'

'No,' he said, 'but I am certainly going to discuss you with him.'

'Do what?'

'I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you your two grand.'

The business manager gasped.

'What?' she said, 'All of it?'

'Yeah,' he said, 'I'll give you your two grand and also, do you want a job?'

'Do what?' I said.

'I'll give you a job,' he said. 'Straight away. Because you are the best salesman I have ever met.'

'What?' I said. 'Is it one of them big, top paying jobs?'

'Job. Big house. Everything. Tomorrow.'

'I haven't been offered a job in over ten years,' I said.

Now Kiran firmly believes he was setting me up for the cameras and he would never have given me a job, and I am sure she is right. I did say this to him, though.

'To change from my hundred and fifty pounds a week living an alternative life-style in Wales as much as I can still relying on the system for a certain number of things but putting back loads more in order to justify my subsistence income, to swap that life-style for a multi-million pound life-style in Yorkshire, working in this place, with you lot, I would consider that as a serious drop in my quality of life. So, no thank you, but I'll tell you what I will do. You start developing a non-pollutive Landrover and I'll come and work for you tomorrow selling that. You get the stuff together to do it and I'll sell it for you. If you're not prepared to do that, then I can't do it, mate. It would, for me, be selling out.'

Various people in Wales have asked me why I did not take the job for a year, make a load of dosh and then piss off? No! That is still selling out in my books, regardless of how I used the money. Imagine how that would look on telly. "He can be bought. Everybody can be bought." You can imagine how seductive it was for me and Kiran really, to consider that if they gave us a house and I made sure it did not say in the contract that if I left after three days they would get it back then I would suddenly have a house. No. This was all wrong, wrong, wrong. Become one of us. That was what he was saying. "You have done me, you have won, now you are one of us." No!

All the same, the Business Manager was all over me. She was hugging me outside in the car park.

'This is fantastic,' she said. 'He's never reacted to that, it's even hard for Gerard to get cash out of him.'

So the camera crew started to interview her.

'How do you think Craig did?'

'How do I think Craig did?' she gawped. 'He just got offered a job! Are you mad? He got offered a job that I'd saw my leg off to get! Head of sales at Landrover UK North Yorkshire? I don't think you realise how powerful these men are!'

'I actually do,' I said, 'and that's why I'm not taking the job.'

'No,' she said, 'you're fantastic. I can't wait to work with you again. I've got a list of millionaires' phone numbers for you, that'll be fun, won't it Craig?'

'I should jolly well hope so,' I said.

'This is fantastic,' she said. 'No-one's offered you a job in ten years?'

'No, no, no,' I said. 'No-one at all, and, let's face it, if I had gone for a job in here he wouldn't have offered me a job in a million years, not dressed like this.'

'Well,' she said, 'maybe he would and maybe we should think about this.'

Now here is a woman who believed that power-dressing and wearing the right uniform was essential and suddenly she is thinking, hang on... he was a good salesman. It is not that we are pretending he is just to make it a chirpy programme for him and his mates. I actually did do what was expected of me and more than they were expecting.

'Now,' she said. 'Right, at the polo club ball, he's going to have his own table with all of his entourage there. You must continually make sure that they are fed and watered and personally serve them, as Gerard would do.'

That's how powerful this crew were.

'You must make sure you do that, because it is not just about that two thousand, it is about his continuing relationship with Gerard's empire.'

'I'll try my best,' I said.

I ignored them all evening. I did not go near the buggers. Every time I came close to the table, they were all grinning, going, 'There he is! Do you still want the job Craig?' And I went, 'I'm thinking about it.'

'Come over and chat.'

'I'm really busy, I'm really sorry.'

You can imagine, they were all over me.

'We understand mate, but we would like you to sort us out for a few things this evening...'

I was evidently supposed to pay for a lot of their drinks out of my thousand pound weekly income. They did not get a goddamned penny of it. I gave it all back to Armada TV. We gave them back something like six hundred and fifty quid and most of the four hundred odd pounds that we spent that week we were forced to spend on things we would not normally buy, like a one hundred and fifty pound meal. I made a point of showing the public that you do not need that amount of money even if you are running a business empire, so the fact that I was expected to spend even more money on that table at that function than I had spent on everything else put together just made me think - 'Fuck you!' Even if it means I will never have a job with Landrover UK even if they do bring out an environmental engine, this is wrong. That is bribery! You are not just buying and selling goods, you are buying and selling people. Kiran came to the conclusion that slavery has not gone away, they have just changed the look of it. It is still here. Well, they see us as slaves but they are slaves to one another too. To most of them, the only people who are not slaves are themselves.

Gerard had already broken the rules before we had even started. Everything he had from us was exactly what we have and do. I did not pull any wool over anybody's eyes hither or thither. The only thing I might have done was that I did not mention the fact that I take drugs, so perhaps a more realistic programme would have had him having to get stoned, in order to behave like me. But then again, a more realistic show would have had me having to kill a fox, or what was left of it after the hounds had ripped it into pieces in front of my daughter. I did not do that, so in some ways it was a bit Even Stevens.

Of course, there was an extra twist, because neither of us came away wanting to live the other one's life even though I am sure the commissioning editors higher up were hoping I would be seduced by Gerard's world. He seemed to handle my world reasonably well, though. I saw camcorder footage of his gig and the way things were going. He looked comfortable, indeed, very happy. He managed to learn how to play a percussion instrument and sing in the space of three days, as anybody would under the tutelage of the people that I had on his case. His wife was amazed that her partner was able to do that after everybody had assured me that he did not have a musical bone in his body. He loved it, and his son, his twelve-year-old son, saw his father on stage in a hippie hat singing songs about working class impoverishment and the absolute need to eat beans and chips! Every time, the chorus went, 'Beans and chips, Beans and chips...' There was poor old Gerard reading the lyrics off a piece of paper, without realising what he was singing, which caused Alice, the cross-dressing anarchist of some fifty-three years of age no small amount of amusement. He was there, singing on stage with Gerard, with his arm around him. To be honest, this did not come across as ridicule at all. It came across as an emancipation from what I have seen.

He did all the things that he was supposed to do, apart from cheating and smuggling money in and keeping control of his estate. He did go through a lot of the tasks I wanted him to achieve and he succeeded. Good. I succeeded too, but I was not impressed or happy. Obviously the media could manipulate it and make it look as though I am just sour grapes all over and say, "He was prepared to live your life, but you weren't prepared to live his..." They would be wrong. Because his life is wrong! This is not just comparing two types of ice-cream. This is not just "everybody can be everyone else, aren't we lucky?" This is about what is right and what is goddamned wrong. I was not a capitalist for a week and he was not an anarchist for a week. Do not even think for a moment that either of us could have done that even had we wanted to. There was no way he was going to take up arms against the state and there was no way I was going to beat my servants. It was not going to happen.

I have to say, though, it went far further than any other programme I have ever seen towards that. Our shock at each other's life-style was incredible.

'You're not lazy,' he said to me when I finally got to meet him in a London pub. 'That's one thing I have changed my opinion about. You can't be considered lazy. You or any of your mates. I find it even more bewildering therefore why you are so satisfied to stay on the bottom.'

'Because we don't have any concept of the top,' I said. 'There is no top or bottom. I do what I feel is necessary, not in order to climb up a ladder or anything like that. But the fact that you thought we were lazy is an appalling insult really.'

Every time he tried to humour me or flatter me, he was totally nonplussed by the fact that I was not even having that off him. I was not doing it on purpose. I was not actually happy with what he was saying. I was not being threatening or anything but, oh, now I am supposed to feel happy that you like me? Well, I do not want you to like me, unless you are prepared to give up your life-style and you are not ever going to do that so I would really try your best not to like me because that would make it far easier for the likes of me to take down the likes of you, which is inevitably what is going to happen.

I have thought about this. Gerard would only change if all of his things were taken away, perhaps by a natural disaster, brought on by the impact of the things he is doing anyway. I think he would have a hard time excusing himself if half of Britain was underwater by the time he was seventy because we could all turn around and say, 'Well, you and your mates at Landrover UK are responsible for it. How many bloody jet planes did you hire?' He chartered a private plane to pick his wife up to fly her to Spain during the week she was supposed to be living Kiran's life. He did this to appease her ex-husband, who was threatening to take him to court because he claimed that the programme amounted to 'child abuse' and that his & her kids were going to suffer as a result of what Gerard had done. This man was another multi-million pound businessman, using the media as leverage to undermine the bloke who had stolen his woman. She had to fly to Spain, behind the cameras' backs, and keep it all away from the public. "We live a life above the lives of other people." The camera crew were not that stupid. I was standing next to Luke, the director, when he found out what she had done. He was on the phone.

'She's done what? It's falling apart your end isn't it? No! No, it's falling apart your end. You're not keeping a handle on it. She should not have been able to do that. Their phones were taken off them weren't they?'

'Luke,' I said. 'I tried to tell you what Gladys, the housemaid, told me. He smuggled in five extra phones. That is why you ain't having my phone.'

I would not let him have mine, but I did not misuse it and I made a point of that. He actually advised me to cheat, midweek.

'He's cheating,' the director said, 'you might as well. Ring up Carrot, see how it's going.'

'I am not going to cheat,' I said.

'Really?'

'I am not going to cheat, mate. I have no interest in what is going on. It is none of my business. What my business is, is here and I am following the fucking rules here. It would only worry me.'

Some of them tried to get in touch with me and I was quite sharp with them. There was one moment when all of this cheating was made known to our friends and they were worried for our safety. Craig and Kiran and Lily are in a dangerous situation, they thought. This bugger is in contact with his estate but we have no contact with them. So they rang my mate Jean Bonnin. He had nearly been involved in the project, but had decided against it. Then again, his father was a French resistance fighter in the Second World War and one of the lawyers at the Nuremberg trials, so with that background, Jean is not a great fan of capitalists, fascists or aristocrats. He decided not to take part in the show, but midweek he rang me even though he knew I was not contactable. I was in the Landrover at the time, driving the director around.

'Answer your phone,' he said.

'It's a mate of mine,' I said.

'Answer it.'

'I'm not supposed to talk to him.'

'Answer it. He could be worried about your safety.'

'He's a fucker,' I said. 'I told no-one to ring me.'

'No,' he said, 'answer it.'

So, I stopped the car and answered the phone.

'What's up Jean?'

'Are you all right?' he asked me.

'Yeah.'

'But are you sure you're all right?'

'I'm fine, mate.'

'No, no,' he said, 'I am really concerned, man. It's all going a bit wrong this end. He's not following the rules, they have not met a lot of the people you wanted them to and he seems to have taken over the production crew.'

Well, the crew at the other end were particularly young, and naïve, so, of course, a forty-two year old captain of industry was going to dominate them.

'That's not happening this end,' I said. 'Quite the opposite. As for the crew, I've got them eating out of my hand, mate. I am their god!'

This was next to the director and he was grinning.

'I am their fucking Messiah, mate, and this is it. If this does not get a whole clutch of awards for these bastards, then there is no justice. It is fantastic this end.'

'It's terrible this end,' Jean said.

'I am sure it is,' I said. 'You have got a real nasty bugger in your midst.'

'How bad?'

'Bad,' I said. 'I ain't going to tell you because I am not allowed to.'

'Really bad?'

'Think about as bad as it can be,' I said, 'and it's that bad. Yeah? Everything. I'll say this: stuffed foxes.'

''Nuff said. But you're all right?'

'I'm having a whale of a time,' I said. 'Landrover have just offered me a multi-million pound job.'

'What did you say?'

'I told them to shove it up their arses.'

'Jolly good! All right,' he said, and then he rang off.

'Do you feel better now?' the director asked.

'Well,' I said, 'he certainly does but I don't feel comfortable for having had that conversation in front of you. I don't want to be like Gerard. I don't think I have to be like him in order to oppose him. I don't have to fight fire with fire. He is shooting himself in the foot so often I don't need a gun.'

'Fair enough,' he said.

As the week went on, Luke's respect for me and Kiran just ballooned. There were other occasions late at night when he would try to get us to ring up but I said no. All of this was filmed, but he was not doing this for the sake of the cameras. He was genuinely upset that this was not any longer an even playing field and that our opponents (because, to all intents and purposes, that was what they had become) were cheating and manipulating his show.