by Simon Cowell
‘But I can’t move,’ I mumbled.
John had to hoist me to my feet. Oddly, I felt sober as a judge and couldn’t work out why my limbs didn’t work. One of the soberer farmhands delivered us home and, once in my room, I passed out and dreamed of apples.
In addition to cider, I was introduced to another country pursuit during my tenure on the farm. I learned how to use a shotgun. Given my choice of vocation people are often surprised to hear that in my former life, before I started saving wildlife, I killed it. It is not something of which I am proud and it is not something I would condone or partake in today but I still have no problem with someone who shoots to eat. I eat meat and I enjoy eating meat. Humans are omnivores. We have evolved to be meat eaters and it seems logical to me that if you choose to eat meat you should not be squeamish about the fact that your choice ultimately means that something has died. You want dinner, you go out and shoot something, skin it and eat it. That, to me, is better than going to a supermarket and spending a few pounds on a chicken that has lived a short and miserable life and died in a very unpleasant way. The mechanization and industrialization of meat production are something I find abhorrent; everything is so intensive and unfair on the animal, which becomes a commodity, and a cheap one at that. I always buy organic and free range where I can and I think it takes guts to do the raising, killing and the preparation yourself. It’s fairer and it makes you consider the impact of your diet choices. Even when you know it has had a good life I think it is still hard to turn an animal you have cared for into a casserole. I couldn’t go out in the yard thinking, I want chicken tonight. I’ll have that one. I’ll have Beatrice.
Shooting on the farm was practical. Sometimes I would take a rabbit or pigeon for the pot, other times the shooting would be for pest control. I didn’t delight in it but if a fox was taking chickens it was necessary. All the farmers had the same approach. If you needed to kill something you did it, quickly and efficiently.
I worked on the farm through the winter, braving the wet weather and taking delight in throwing my heroic Anglia around the country lanes. There wasn’t a great deal to do other than drink and work so I entertained myself with country drives and attracted a bit of a name for myself as a boy racer. I don’t know what possessed me – I just loved the adrenaline kick. The deserted, winding lanes lent themselves to my favourite style of driving (fast) and I became competent at negotiating the challenging twists and turns.
By the time spring arrived I had begun to question whether farming was really what I was destined to do. I wanted to enjoy life and I wondered whether I would enjoy a life of farming. I explained this to Dad, who could see that I wasn’t 100 per cent sold on agriculture and one day, out of the blue, he called with an offer. Through the course of his work he had got to know a senior partner at a City of London brokerage firm called ED&F Man. The chap owned a farm and Dad had mentioned that he had a son who was coming up to his nineteenth birthday and who was at a loss as to what to do with his life.
‘Tell him to come in for an interview,’ the chap said. So I did.
I did not know the first thing about finance, markets, the City or stocks and shares but I was confident enough in my ability to learn quickly and, given the choice between a life of mud and cows in the west and the possibility of a decent wage and a warm office in the City, I didn’t take much persuading. I explained the situation to John, who knew in a few months I would be off to college anyway and he encouraged me to give it a go. I drove up to Brockham at the weekend with my only suit in the back of the car. On the Monday morning I brushed the straw off it and, still smelling of cows, got on the train at Dorking with the rest of the commuters and headed to Mincing Lane where the firm had its headquarters.
ED&F Man was one of the City’s historic businesses. It was initially founded as a sugar brokerage by businessman and trader James Man in 1783 and in the following year won the contract to supply the Royal Navy with rum for its sailors, each of whom were allocated a rationed daily shot – or tot as it was called. The tradition continued until 1970, two years before I went for my interview, and the company had expanded from sugar and rum into other commodities such as coffee and cocoa.
In truth, it was a scoop for me to get the interview. The City in those days employed a lot of ex-Army people and you were only likely to get in if you knew someone. It was a club and quite an exclusive one at that. Not knowing how fortunate I was worked in my favour. Having been on a farm for a year, people didn’t tend to scare me or make me nervous. I walked into the ostentatious reception of the building, gave my name and sat on the leather sofa waiting to be called.
I was shown upstairs into a plush, wood-panelled boardroom. Seven men in suits were sitting around one end of a large oval table. I said hello and one of them gestured for me to sit in a single chair placed at the other end of the table. They were all very smartly dressed and, although I didn’t know much about clothes, I could tell their suits were expensive. I became acutely aware of the bovine scent that was rising from my scratchy brown blazer. The men started firing questions at me left right and centre. It was a barrage.
‘Tell us a bit about yourself.’
‘What do you know about commodities markets?’
‘What strengths could you bring to the job?’
‘What’s that smell?’
I tried to keep up with the questions but, after a minute or so, I held my hand up.
‘Please, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘It’s no good all asking at once. I can’t answer you all at the same time. One at a time is fine.’
I saw a few of them exchange glances. The tempo of the interview slowed and we discussed my achievements – which I embellished somewhat. I told them about my exam results, my musical interests and that I enjoyed driving. I explained that I was used to hard work, enjoyed a challenge and was a fast learner and a problem solver. My stutter didn’t run away with me and I talked slowly and purposefully. They explained that the job on offer was a commodities broker in sugar. I had no idea what that meant but it sounded interesting. I explained that my time spent on the farm had taught me about how commodities markets worked and how raw materials and food were traded.
After around thirty minutes they sent me out the room for a while and then called me back in.
‘We are pleased to be able to offer you the job. When can you start?’ the senior partner asked.
‘Straight away,’ I answered.
And that’s how simple it was. I called John up and told him I wouldn’t be back. He understood. I moved back in with my parents temporarily but a few weeks later bought my first property: a flat in Sutton, which cost £13,000. I started my City career on £800 a year plus bonuses, which was a decent wage in those days. I joined the rat race the day I turned nineteen; I bought a rail season ticket, a new suit (but not a bowler hat) and walked across London Bridge every working day for nearly twenty-three years. Initially, it was a massive culture shock but the money focused my mind and once I got in there I realized that money was actually quite nice to have and I started to enjoy the lifestyle it afforded me. Eventually, of course, it eats into your soul but we will come to that later. For the time being, I played the part of City trader and learned about commodities. There is a physical side – growing it, moving it, refining it – and there is the paper side – selling it and trading it. ED&F Man had 700 employees at the time and traded in huge quantities of goods. I soon realized why I got the job. The pace was frenetic and relentless, the office was busy and noisy. I had to juggle lots of things at once and they were looking for someone who stayed calm and focused under pressure, which I did in the interview.
I sailed through the first years as the firm expanded. I started trading with other countries. I sold sugar to Iceland or Israel. Then I got moved on to the futures department and the baying market floor with the screaming and the shouting. I loved the life. I had £50 notes in my pocket. I had money to burn. As a child every penny had been accounted for in the household. In my
early twenties I had wealth I never dreamed of. I got used to it. I was a Master of the Universe. The farm in Devon and the unclaimed place at the agricultural college was a different life away.
CHAPTER THREE
International
Playboy
THERE WAS A rigid hierarchy in the firm and everyone knew their place. I was at the bottom. At the pinnacle were the partners, to whom I looked up and who also scared the living daylights out of me. One of the bosses was a chap who could be lovely one day and not so lovely the next. I quickly learned to watch him from afar for a few minutes in the mornings to work out what sort of mood he was in. Once I’d gauged whether he was having a good day or a bad day I knew what I could and couldn’t say and what I could get away with. Another of the partners was an Eastern European guy called Charles who did extremely well and made the company millions. He was a much more stable character and would often give me advice, which was generally ‘keep your head down and do your job’.
It was a very noisy environment. There was plenty of shouting and chest-beating, especially on the trading floor which was housed in a place called Plantation House just across the road from our office. The trading floors were where traders went to buy and sell. Plantation House had different floors for different commodities – there was a coffee floor, a sugar floor, a cocoa floor and a spice floor. Around the edge of each there were lots of little telephone booths and, in those days, when someone took an order it was written on a greyscale screen with an electric pencil and the details then came up at the other end in the office. It was cutting-edge technology long before the days of computers.
At ED&F Man we traded physical sugar. A customer would ring me up from somewhere in the world and say that they wanted 5,000 tonnes of refined sugar of a certain quality. I would ring up someone who supplied it, be it Tate & Lyle or a refinery in Czechoslovakia, and match the seller and the buyer while taking a couple of dollars’ commission from the deal. I’d arrange the shipping, the letters of credit and all the paperwork. The idea was to make a profit for the broker in the middle. So if Israel wanted to buy sugar for a certain price and someone was selling at a lower price the difference between the two was mine.
A few years after I joined the firm, it executed one of the most daring deals in sugar history. Sugar traders still talk about it with reverence today. The deal took Man from being a mid-sized brokerage to a huge one and involved shady Russian businessmen, diamonds, a glamorous Russian woman and lots and lots of sugar.
It was the middle of the Cold War and the USSR and the West were threatening each other with nuclear Armageddon. Leonid Brezhnev was the communist leader and had overseen a huge expansion of the Soviet military during his tenure. Politically, the situation was tense. However, what much of the world didn’t realize was that behind the politics, in the world of business, the communist Soviet Union was as much involved in the international markets as anyone else. Russians still needed coffee, spices, wheat and everything else. Soviet agriculture, with its centralized farms and government-imposed quotas, could not supply demand and Brezhnev’s predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev, had started to import cereal, often from the mortal enemy, the USA. When Brezhnev had difficulties sealing commercial trade agreements with the United States, he went elsewhere to countries such as Argentina to do business. Another crop that started to hit the buffers in the USSR along with wheat was sugar beet. In the seventies, harvests declined by 2 per cent and subsequently the Soviets needed sugar from other sources.
They came to ED&F Man and the firm offered to help, knowing that when we started buying the huge quantities they needed, prices would rise considerably. At the time sugar was dirt cheap and the Soviets wanted to continue buying at that price. We bought up loads and sold it to them at the market rate and, as we did, the price rose, which meant we were taking a loss. However, very shrewdly and quietly we also went on the futures market and bought up huge amounts of paper sugar for a year or eighteen months forward. It was a long-game strategy. We lost money on the physical sugar that we sold at the cheap price but, as the prices rose and rose, the firm made a huge profit on the forward commodity they had bought. It was a huge deal worth millions and millions. The partners had to put up something called a performance bond to guarantee the fulfilment of the contract and, according to stories I heard, they all treble-mortgaged their houses to get the money together to fund the deal. There was huge risk involved but it paid off.
The deals also brought me and the rest of the sugar team into contact with a range of colourful characters from the East, not least a woman whom I’ll call Madame G, who came over from Moscow to do the negotiating. The Cold War might have been getting frostier but you wouldn’t have known it when the comrades from the Soviet sugar cooperative were in town. We were told to lavish gifts on them and spoil them rotten. Whatever they wanted they got and wherever they wanted to go they were taken. They came over with their bodyguards and stayed in suites at the Mayfair Hotel. If Madame G wanted a diamond ring she got a diamond ring. Hundreds of thousands of pounds were frittered away. It was how the world worked. It wasn’t just the Soviets. If the deal was good enough no effort was spared. Once I remember walking across London Bridge with a briefcase full of krugerrands for a client because he had mentioned he wanted some. Gifts greased the wheels of commerce.
From day one I was earning more money than most of the people I knew who didn’t work in the City. I replaced the Anglia with an MG Midget. My first bonus was a couple of hundred pounds and I bought my mum a bunch of flowers with it but it rose rapidly after that. A year later, in 1972, I was called in to receive my second bonus.
‘Thank you for your work this year, Simon,’ said the partner who handed me a folded up cheque. Politely I thanked him and put it in my pocket.
‘Do you want to look at that?’ he asked.
‘No thank you, sir,’ I said. I didn’t want to appear rude.
‘I think you might want to look at it,’ he encouraged.
Very quickly I took it back out my pocket, unfolded it and glanced at it. I saw a number five. I assumed it was £500; twice my first bonus.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ I said.
Later, when I looked at the cheque properly, I realized it was for £5,000, a huge sum of money for a twenty-one-year-old. Pretty soon after that I went into Reigate in Surrey and walked into a new car showroom. I looked over a brand new Triumph TR6 – a top-spec roadster – and as I did a pompous salesman came over and looked down his nose at me.
‘Can I help you?’ he sniffed.
‘Just looking,’ I said. I opened the door and got in. I heard him sigh so I looked over it a bit more. I started playing with the levers and the knobs on the dashboard. I could see him getting agitated. It was obvious he thought I was just messing around.
I got out of the car, stood back, tilted my head, looked at it and said absently: ‘I think I’ll take it.’
The salesman’s tone changed in a microsecond. Suddenly, he couldn’t be helpful enough. The car cost £1,908 and I still have the receipt. When I was presented with a company car – a Triumph Dolomite – my TR6 became the weekend run-around. I kept it for many years and sold it later for £3,500.
My social life started to revolve around work. Everyone went shooting and when I mentioned that I had an interest in the sport I got invited along, too. But after a while I became disillusioned. The shoots were just jollies for rich City folk. Herds of braying gents would go out and shoot hundreds of pheasants a day and I would sit back and think, They are not going to get eaten, they are going to be buried in a hole in the ground. It was during one of those business shoots that I put my sporting gun down for the last time. The shoots followed a pattern: pheasants in the day and duck in the evening. The ducks made easy targets in the twilight when they flew in to land and roost in reeds around the lake. With the weight of expectation on me I reluctantly shot one and it wheeled out of the sky, dead. Its mate circled in the red sky above it. I shot the mate and it die
d, too. I felt sick to my stomach. It was pointless. Two wasted lives. For what? For me and a load of rich toffs to boast to one another. I put my gun in its case.
‘That’s the last time I am ever going to shoot for the sake of shooting,’ I said to no one in particular, and it was. It had screwed with my head and I couldn’t handle it any more. I like to think that on that day I woke up. Shooting on that scale for those reasons turns the death of sentient beings into entertainment for other people. At least shooting pests on farms or rabbits for food had a purpose.
As I got busier I became a member of several London clubs and casinos. I was furnished with an unlimited expense account and a company American Express card, which was a status symbol. I was encouraged to entertain clients and there was no limit on what I could spend; the proviso I was told when the card was handed to me was to ‘use it as necessary, providing you don’t rip the arse out of it’. I was diligent and careful not to take liberties but when entertaining I spent what the client wanted me to spend. There was a lot of evening entertaining and a lot of expenses. I did what I had to do to make money for the company. Most days I was out to lunch in the City in a smart restaurant. In the evening I would be somewhere such as the Mayfair or the Ritz for dinner. I got a taste for fine dining. The clients then often wanted to go to a casino and gamble, and after that they sometimes wanted to go and do other more unmentionable things with ladies of the night. I provided it all.
Meanwhile, my parents were busy trying to fix me up with a wife to settle down with. Perhaps they watched from a distance and saw me getting increasingly seduced by the immoral lure of City life and wanted to anchor me to something more stable. They had long-term friends, originally from Gloucestershire, who had a daughter called Jill. Her father was a very well-to-do lawyer who worked for the Church and always wore a bowler hat. Jill and I had been introduced at a family event some years previously but hadn’t quite hit it off. She was a very attractive girl but I was a bit of an arse at the time and I don’t think she liked me very much. A few years later, however, we met again and I must have been on my best behaviour that time because we got on well. She was a musician and played the oboe and the clarinet. I still played the trumpet and so we had something in common. She had just finished studying at the Royal College of Music and was working for British American Tobacco in Westminster, next to the Houses of Parliament. As we were both young and worked in London, we arranged to meet up and started dating.