If You Can't Take a Joke...

by Gordon Gray

  “No need to get your projector, please, use ours, it is already there” said Commander W.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  I stood up and made my way to the end of the table, where a 35 mm slide projector had been set up for me. I took a couple of deep breaths and prepared myself to give the final presentation that Peter and I had worked on and which covered all the requirements for the system. It covered all the key features and benefits and addressed all the concerns that we knew the Saudi had raised about our system and about minehunting in the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea areas. This was our final chance to get it right and take a giant step closer to an order worth many tens of millions of pounds for potentially six ship systems. “Better not blow it, Gray,” I said to myself.

  The course of true love never runs smooth and nor do some key presentations. The navy’s projector was an old model with a very sensitive forward and reverse button and had a lovely habit of going backwards instead of forwards without warning, which, to say the least, was a little off-putting. In spite of the navy’s dodgy slide projector, I felt that we had managed to get the key points across and answered all their questions.

  Over the next few days, Peter and I spent many hours in separate meetings with the minehunting sub-committee clarifying points or describing some operational points in greater depth. Finally, the meetings were all over and the negotiations complete. All we could now do was wait. No one really knew for how long as the Saudis were not saying anything. On the final night, Commander Carr invited us all to an informal farewell reception that he hosted for both teams in the garden of his house in the Diplomatic Quarter.

  As Peter and I arrived, Nick said, “I am sure that the commodore will come and I have also invited the rear admiral, but I think it is very unlikely that he will come as royals rarely visit private residences, especially those of a foreigner.”

  Peter and I relaxed and mingled with the VT guys and some of the Saudis. About an hour or so later, as we were chatting, we noticed that a small group of Saudis in Arab dress had just arrived and had begun circulating and being introduced to people by Commander Carr. It was the prince and his team. He got to Peter and I and Nick introduced me.

  “Ah, Mr Gray,” said the Prince. “My people tell me we should buy your minehunting system. Well done.” He smiled and shook my hand.

  “Thank you, your Highness,” was all I could say and he and his party moved on. I looked at Peter, who was as open-mouthed as I was. “Does that mean what I think it means?” I said.

  “I think so,” said Peter. “We’ve done it!”

  Anywhere else in the world and we would have gone down the pub, but as we were in Saudi, more orange juice was called for. The next morning, Peter and I had great delight in sending a coded telex to Bill from Peter’s office through the Plessey Head Office.

  Some months later, after the contracts had all been finalised and the prince had been on a visit to our facilities in the UK, we took our marketing director, Giles, out to Saudi to make an official call on the prince in Riyadh. The prince was a charming man with a quiet sense of humour and spoke excellent English. In the general chit-chat at the start of the meeting, we were discussing the Iraq war and the scud missiles that had been fired at Riyadh by Iraq.

  The prince recounted a story to us: “During that time, I had been tied to the Naval HQ for weeks and spent many hours at night in the air raid bunkers here underneath NHQ. However, one night I was at home with my family, when the air raid sirens sounded again. I hurriedly called the family together and I set off to go down to the cellar, but my two young daughters were already running upstairs. “Where are you going? We must go to the shelter!” I cried. “No, Daddy” they shouted back. “When the sirens go, we always go to the roof to watch the fireworks!”

  Excess Baggage

  In the 80s and early 90s, the standard format for official presentations was 35 mm slides. Laptops had not been invented and computers were just starting to appear as large desktops. Some fairly sexy computer-generated presentations were beginning to be seen, but they were still very much “non portable”. The 35 mm slides, however, were easy to carry, and slide projectors were readily available anywhere in the world and you could chop and change the presentations to suit the occasion.

  At the start of the 90s, I was working for Thorn EMI and we were working with other Thorn divisions on proposals for a major test range for the Royal Saudi Air Force. As our division would have the lion’s share of any contract, I was selected to give the presentation of our capabilities and experience with the UK MOD and RAF in test range instrumentation monitoring and safety. We had been involved in the lead up for months with visits to Riyadh by myself and others from the company as we tried to build up relationships with the senior Air Force officers, so we could understand what they wanted and so they could understand what we could offer to meet their requirements.

  It was now time to put together all that we had presented and discussed before and present the whole picture to the top layer of the RSAF and the Saudi MOD. In the weeks leading up to the trip, one of the senior directors from corporate HQ, Tom, was put in charge of the whole activity. Tom was an ever cheerful Welshman in the Max Boyce mould, who was well liked by all and seen as a ‘good egg’. It was decided by head office that we needed to make this presentation a bit special with all the slides being specially customised for the Saudi Air Force and to make sure that every aspect was properly covered. Tom found a computer graphics company who then worked with us on creating the best visual effects for the presentation. They assured us that they could make a ‘moving slide show’ that could be projected from the computer onto a screen with seamless blending from slide to slide and some virtual graphic simulations to show special features in operation.

  However, the computer, with the presentation stored in its hard drive, needed a large Barco three gun colour projector. This was about 2 foot square by 1 foot high. In those days, neither equipment was small. In fact, both were very large and very heavy. We spent quite a few afternoons at the graphic house looking at their initial attempts, correcting the slides and suggesting improvements. As our departure date drew closer, we found that a lot of the promised ‘virtual’ scenes and movie effects were no more than a series of still shots. It gradually dawned on us that the promises of moving 3D pictures and virtual scenes had been a little oversold! What we had was little more than a glorified slide set. At the same time, after a few computer crashes in the graphics house, Tom got more and more nervous about the reliability of the computer and projection system and how we could ensure that we could set it up correctly and that it worked when we got to Saudi.

  The week before we left, Tom wisely decided that we needed one of the graphics company’s engineers to come out with us to set it all up and make sure it worked. There was an internal debate and a young guy called Phil was volunteered to go. He just about had time to get his visa before we left. He seemed a good choice as he had been involved in the slides and seemed fairly calm and unflappable. Three days before we were due to go, we had gone over to their offices for a run-through on their final version of the presentation. It had not gone well. The computer had crashed again and Tom was not happy with the graphic effects and looked decidedly agitated about it all.

  I was sitting at the back while a discussion about the computer’s resilience was going on, so I said to Phil, “Can you please let me have a 35 mm slide of every one of the images on the computer?”

  Tom turned round. “Why do you want that, we have it all on the computer?”

  “Well, I agree Tom, if it all goes to plan, but if for any reason we have a problem with the computer or BA send it all to Hong Kong, then at least I will have the slides.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Phil said, “Sure, no problem. They can be done tomorrow.”

  We all met at Heathrow for the flight out, together with a user expert from the MOD who we knew well. We all helped unload the three big wooden cases from the
company van onto a big luggage trolley; the projector, the computer and a box full of “other stuff”, which included a standard Kodak Carousel 35 mm slide projector. The check-in girl looked at it and demanded that it all got weighed. The excess baggage bill ran into thousands of pounds, which Tom charged to his company credit card.

  Following our arrival in Riyadh, we were met by the local Thorn director, John, with a rented van. We got all the boxes into the van and it disappeared off to the office. The next day, we went down to the office and Phil, Tom and I set up the equipment in an empty office. After a few hours of fiddling, cursing and tweeking, the colour projector was deemed to be working OK! Then we tried the computer; that too, seemed OK. We were able to show the slides on the wall. Our local man, John, was then asked to call the Air Force HQ and ask if we could take the equipment into the HQ that evening and set it up the day before our meeting. This was not easy as the presentation room was booked to be in use all that day, but eventually they agreed that we could take the equipment in after 1800.

  As we were loading it up, John took me to one side. “What the hell do we need all that stuff for? What if it doesn’t work?”

  “John, I am with you. It was Tom’s idea and he is running it, but don’t worry, I have a plan if it all goes pear-shaped!”

  John looked at me, “What is that?”

  “The 35 mm slide set in my briefcase” I answered. John visibly relaxed.

  The four of us duly set off in the van to set it all up in the RSAF HQ. We carried all the boxes from the car park across a courtyard and then up two flights of stairs to get it to the conference room. Being Riyadh in the late summer it was hot work and we were all dripping by the time we started to unpack it all. We confidently set things up and ran cables and inserted plugs; with any luck, we would be out of here in under an hour and could go back to the hotel for a nice cold orange juice.

  The graphics man, Phil, switched on the projector and a warm glow of colour grew on the screen. “Good, that’s all OK,” he sighed. Then he switched on the computer and… nothing! Not a sausage! Not a green light, not even a red light, let alone a humming noise. Dead!

  “Check the power cable!” called Tom.

  “It’s in,” said Phil.

  Then the two of them started prodding and poking, as you do, hoping against hope that it was no more than a dodgy connection. It wasn’t. To help things along, one of the Saudi Air Force contacts, a group captain, popped in to see how we were doing. His timing was not the best as a few choice Anglo Saxon words were beginning to be issued.

  “We cannot do anything here; we must get it all back to the office!” decided Tom.

  So off we all went, first disconnecting everything, repacking the computer in its crate, then the projector; then carrying it all back down the stairs, across the yard and into the van. When we got it sorted, it would mean an even earlier start tomorrow.

  Back at the office, Phil and Tom set to. Their backsides were all I could see as the computer top came off, then the sides were opened and screwdrivers inserted into holes, with boards wiggled and pushed. “Try it now” Click! Nothing. “Again?” Click! Nothing. After about an hour of trying to get the thing to respond, the considered technical view was that the computer was dead! “Must be the power supply.”

  “Oh hell,” said Tom, “what on earth do we do tomorrow? Can we hire a computer here?”

  “Forget it, this is Saudi,” said John helpfully. “Anyway, even if there was a computer hire shop and you could hire a similar model, how would you get the presentation from the memory of the dead one onto the hired one?”

  By now it was after nine at night and we were all tired, hungry and more than a little thirsty, so tempers were a bit frayed.

  “I have got all the slides,” I bravely mentioned. “We can do it on the normal slide projector. All we will lose is the gradual fadings from slide to slide and the visual effects the computer gave us; but everything else is there on the slides!”

  “But what are we going to use as a projector,” said Tom.

  “The carousel in the case.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot we brought that.”

  It was finally agreed that that was what we would do. We called it a day and headed back to the hotel.

  The next day, we duly arrived at the Air Force HQ. We were escorted up to the conference room and within a few minutes, we had the projector set up on the end of the table and the slides all loaded. Tom was due to start the proceedings and I was to take over halfway through. The slide projector worked perfectly and our message was delivered, questions answered and everyone happy. Job done!

  Diraiyah

  During this time in Riyadh, I remembered the advice that Steve had given me years before in Dharan. “Go to the old capital at Diraiyah.” I did. I took a taxi from the hotel and when I told the miserable, surly-looking driver where I wanted to go, his face lit up. He was delighted and he waved his hand over the front seat and we shook hands. “My name is Mohammed, you are most welcome,” he said. He then took great pleasure in explaining all he knew of his country’s history and its ancient capital. As we drove out of town, he explained the history:

  “Diraiyah was an ancient settlement in the Oasis of Wadi Hanafi. It was settled by King Saud’s ancestors over 600 years ago. They were just farmers and traders then, of course. The very old part of the town has gone but the later parts can still be seen and we are restoring it for future generations.” He was clearly very proud of this chunk of history.

  He explained, “In the 1700s, the leader of the Saud tribe made a pact with an Islamic reformer called Abdul Wahhaab. They agreed to spread the true version of Islam throughout the land and Wahhaab moved to Diraiyah which became a religious centre. Because of this, Diraiyah grew prosperous; it became a trading centre and pilgrims came here from the Haj. By the mid 1700s, the Al Saud and Wahaabb embarked on military campaigns across Arabia to enforce the Wahhaabi Islam. In the early 1800s, the Ottoman Turks sent an army into the area and after a long siege took the city. The Saud ruler surrendered but was put to death anyway by the Turks who destroyed much of Diraiyah. However, the Saud families remained in the area and set up a new town in what is now Riyadh.”

  Mohammed parked the taxi and took me on a walk through the ruins. Much is being done to restore the mud walls and buildings to their former glory. We walked through the deserted ruins and he took me through a low narrow doorway into a watchtower in the walls. It was over 90 degrees outside, but in this simple mud tower, it was cool and refreshing. He showed me storerooms, houses, mosques, old ornate wooden doors and the remains of the old palaces which had been the homes of Al Saud families. Some of the restored palaces were, even just from a distance, fantastic buildings – massive sandcoloured fortresses, some rising maybe 100 feet into the air. All of this had been built with just mud bricks.

  I left Diraiyah fascinated. I hope that the Saudis complete the restoration as it will be fantastic to see this city and citadel as it once must have been. I thanked Mohammed sincerely and we left as friends.

  “It is not usual for foreigners to want to go there,” he told me. “So I am pleased you did.”

  Moonshine

  It was at about this time that I encountered the local hooch. Strictly illegal, but it was sometimes made within the expat communities. We were invited to someone’s house and offered a little something special. “Yes, let’s try it,” we all said, like naughty schoolboys having a sip of cider. A bottle with a pale-coloured liquid in it was produced from a cupboard at the back of a cupboard. Half an inch was poured into glasses and we all took a glass.

  “We find that some fizzy bitter lemon helps it,” said our host.

  So, we all added a small amount of bitter lemon. Then, with much ceremony, we raised our glasses to the skill and ingenuity of someone able to make such fine liquor in the middle of Saudi. We sipped the nectar. Never have so many men struggled to keep a straight face and not insult their host. The stuff was disgusting! We all acce
pted more bitter lemon. It did not help.

  Slowly we finished this awful liquid in sips, but were thankful that no more was offered on the basis of the costs to make it. I am sure you could have fuelled a jumbo jet with it. As for drinking it, then I will stick to coke, thanks. You would really need to be desperate to drink that stuff.

  Arms Dealers

  In some parts of the media international defence salesmen are often referred to as “arms dealers”. The media love the terms as it conjures an image of a decidedly dodgy fellow in a trilby hat sneaking through the dark back alleys with half a dozen Kalashnikovs hidden in his raincoat. They seem to have an idea that a salesman, or “arms dealer”, simply flies into a foreign land, meets another dodgy man in a bar late that night, passes him a thick brown envelope and flies home with an multi-million pound order. The media’s conclusion is that all defence sales people are at best immoral fortune hunters and at worst accessories to genocide. Unfortunately for their stories – and they never like the facts to get in the way of a good story – defence sales never happen like that. Some parts of the media choose to forget that defence of the realm is the first duty of government and to do that a defence industry is essential. To help fund the nation’s defences, the overseas sales of defence equipment to friendly countries is a vital source of income. Overseas defence sales provide funds for research and development that help provides our own defence forces with the latest and best equipment. It is all totally legal and a key national industry that pays corporation taxes, provides work and employs taxpayers. All overseas defence sales must get the approval of the UK MOD before the salesman can even hand out a brochure. I am sure there are independent, lone operators who peddle arms to illegal groups and do get paid cash for them in bars late at night, but they are not employed by UK Defence companies.

  There are corrupt and tyrannical regimes, as well as politically unacceptable ones, around the world and we are barred from approaching these by the UK MOD. However sometimes today’s ‘good guy’ can turn into next year’s ‘bad guy’ due to coups, revolution or even elections. In those circumstances, companies can find that they have to cancel orders already placed on them and can end up with equipment ordered and built, but which cannot now be delivered and will never be paid for. These losses just have to be swallowed by the industry as part of the game.