by Sugar, Alan
The marriage of my son, the birth of my first grandchild and the loss of a close friend are all part and parcel of life. But these events do tend to have an impact on your way of thinking as you get older. I found myself thinking more about my childhood and my parents. I remember them as very quiet and undemanding. My mum would never poke her nose into the affairs of my married life, nor would she tittle-tattle to me about the affairs of Daphne, Derek or Shirley. That said, I think she did confide in Daphne a little more than anyone else.
My mum did make me laugh sometimes when she tried to digest my rise in fortune. She often told me that she’d read something about me in the paper.
‘Alan, I see you’re going to make car phones now!’
‘No, Mum, that’s rubbish. It’s not true.’
‘It is true – it says it in the papers.’
‘Mum, I’m your son and I’m telling you it’s not true. Don’t believe what you read in the papers.’
She would turn and waddle off, mumbling, ‘Well, it’s in the papers . . .’
Apart from Mum’s misinterpretations of the media, I didn’t realise how non-interfering my parents were until I observed, later in life, the way other parents behaved. By comparison, my mother and father were very reserved – they weren’t the type of people who’d casually turn up at our house to visit; they were more inclined to stand on ceremony and wait till they were invited. To an extent, Johnnie and Rita were the same, but I’d say slightly more imposing. Johnnie would speak his mind concerning our personal affairs.
After my dad passed away, we relocated my mum to a flat in Barkingside, near Daphne. But as the years passed, it got to the stage where she was unable to look after herself. On one occasion, when Ann and I visited her, she was totally disoriented. She would fall asleep on the couch at odd hours of the day and then be unable to sleep at night.
One of the things I used to like doing with my mum was getting out all the old photos and going through them with her, listening to her stories about this person and that person. One day, when I visited her and asked her to get the photos out, she told me she’d thrown them all away! She said they were old and there was no point holding on to them any more and thinking about the past. I couldn’t believe what she was saying, but in hindsight I think this act was the result of one of the fits of depression she was prone to at the time. This was such a shame, as we now have very few family photos to look back on – indeed, in this book, there’s a lack of photos of me as a young lad for that very reason.
As Mum was becoming less able to look after herself, I spoke with Daphne about placing her in some kind of warden-assisted home. Daphne found her a place in Ilford, where she had a small room, a bathroom and the use of a communal lounge. On reflection, it was a horrible place. Mum was not very happy about it, though she never came out and said so. I have struggled with my conscience about this ever since. I suppose there’s no other way to put this: I was being very selfish. Although I provided all the finance and ensured that she got the best treatment, what she probably craved most was my personal attention. Despite visiting her every week and bringing her home on Sundays for lunch, I still feel there was a hell of a lot more I could have done.
I discussed this with Ann on numerous occasions. She would tell me not to look for consolation from her to try to allay my guilt: ‘If you feel that bad about it, then do something. Spend more time with your mum. Let’s have her round here for longer.’ To be brutally honest, I was too involved in football and business and I never gave her the time she must have craved.
Then Daphne told me that Mum had gone into a strange sort of mental state after meeting someone at the home whom she’d known many years earlier. Apparently, this woman had driven Mum mad by reminiscing about the old days. As Daphne put it, ‘It’s done Mum’s head in.’ Regrettably, that unprofessional diagnosis was wrong. Mum had suffered a stroke. Through my family doctor, I arranged for her to have the top people look at her, but sadly there was nothing they could do. She was in such a bad state that the people at the warden-assisted home were no longer able to look after her.
I had previously made a donation to Jewish Care which enabled them to build an intensive-care home for elderly people incapable of looking after themselves. I contacted them now and said I needed them to take my mother in. They were very receptive – not surprisingly, since I’d paid to build the place – and allocated her a room. The people at this home were excellent, but it was a depressing place to visit because the condition of most of the residents was dire. I recall visiting Mum, who was completely out of it, and seeing her being spoon-fed by one of the attendants – it was an awful sight. Daphne told me that many a time she’d gone there only to find the food the attendant had fed my mum was still in her mouth, undigested – she wasn’t even capable of chewing.
The last occasion I saw my mum, she was lying in the bed at the care home, very depressed and silent. ‘Mum, it’s Alan, I’m here,’ I said, trying to get through to her. ‘Do you know who I am? Mum, can you hear me? Do you know who I am? It’s Alan, I’m here.’
There was silence and I repeated this about four or five times, ‘Mum, it’s Alan. Do you know who I am?’
Finally, she blurted out, ‘Of course I know who you are! Who do you think you are – Lord Beaverbrook?’
I was taken aback. She always did have a sarcastic sense of humour, but I suspect this comment contained some anger too. It may have been her way of telling me I’d not given her enough attention. Maybe it was a final swipe, in her depressed state, and she was expressing how poorly she felt she’d been looked after by her own children. She knew I was there, she just couldn’t be bothered to talk to me. She was preparing herself to leave this world.
As one can imagine, this last visit panged my conscience. I had left it too late to try to make the tail end of her life a happy period. On 4 June 1994 she passed away peacefully at the age of eighty-seven.
It was a terribly sad occasion for the family and once again the shiva was held at my home and was attended by hundreds of people. My mum was buried beside my dad at the burial grounds in Cheshunt, run by the Jewish Burial Society. My parents had joined the society back in 1920 and had continued to pay the burial service fees over many years. Knowing my dad, I imagine he’d finally be thankful he got value for money.
Watching my own children growing up now, I kind of wonder what will happen to Ann and me when we get older, whether their own lives will be so busy that we might be treated the same way. I somehow know that that won’t be the case. I think about how caring and considerate they were towards Ann’s father, constantly visiting him and keeping him in the loop as far as their own children (his great-grandchildren) were concerned, so I don’t think we have any concerns there.
But it does make me wonder whether my coldness as an individual has something to do with my upbringing. I never experienced any warm feelings of closeness and caring from my parents – a complete contrast to my own family now. I don’t know whether it stems back to how my mother and father were treated by their parents. Certainly, some of my mother’s ways have rubbed off on me. Ann and I are not at all intrusive when it comes to our own children and the way they run their lives – we tend to keep our mouths shut and not interfere. Neither are we the kind of parents who bowl up at their kids’ homes expecting an immediate audience – not that we wouldn’t be welcome. Of course, this may be interpreted by my children as a lack of interest on my behalf, which it is not.
My mother was much cleverer than people thought. She bottled a lot of stuff up inside and never expressed an opinion, but she knew everything that was going on in the family. I have to say that in that respect, I’m the same. And because Ann has lived with me for so many years now (she was sixteen when we met) perhaps my ways have rubbed off on her too. She also seems to bottle up her true feelings about things – although, as two great minds think alike, we do share our inner thoughts from time to time.
I don’t know whether it was my tough up
bringing in the business world, but I find it very difficult to express emotion when people do things that are hurtful to me. Not wishing to show that I am angry or upset about something, I remain silent. I’m not sure this is a good trait – perhaps I ought to express myself and tell the offending party I’m not happy. I’m not confining this to just my family life, but also to business, when colleagues let me down or do things which are hurtful or disrespectful.
Fortunately, this is not a problem between Ann and me. As I often tell people, while Ann may come across as a very quiet, prim and proper lady who never seems to open her mouth about anything, she’s never silent when it comes to letting me know when I’ve done something wrong and there have been many occasions when she’s put me back in line and pointed out the error of my ways. Ann’s input has often served as a great wake-up call. Having said that, I can’t think of many occasions when I’ve had to reciprocate and tell her that she’s done something wrong. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has a bad word to say about Ann, nor indeed anybody who’d have the right to say a bad word about her.
*
It was July 1994 and we were about to start a new season. How would we be able to attract new players when the club was already down six points and out of the FA Cup? All credit to Ossie, he was optimistic. He told me that I’d done a good job in reducing the twelve points to six and said I should just look at it as losing two games over the season.
I was still furious with Kelly and decided I was going to take on the FA again. At the press conference after the appeal hearing, I told the journalists I wasn’t going to leave it there. I spelled it out very clearly – Mr Kelly had overstepped the mark in protecting God’s gift to football, his England coach, and this was clearly a vendetta against me for the aggravation I’d caused by embarrassing the FA over Venables’ financial affairs.
I was determined to kick Kelly’s arse and asked Alan Watts at Herbert Smith what options were open to me. He told me it would be hard, if not impossible, to challenge the FA’s decision in the courts. Normally, you could challenge such a decision by way of judicial review, but since the FA wasn’t a governmental or quasi-governmental authority, this wasn’t possible.
There was, however, another path. I could threaten to take them to court on a breach of contract claim. FIFA, world football’s governing body, had strict rules stating that no football association from any nation must engage or allow one of its members to engage in legal action. This FIFA directive meant that all national football associations had to make sure any disputes were settled out of court. If Tottenham were to take the FA to court, there was a chance the English FA could be punished by FIFA, even to the extent of banning England from a future World Cup! One country had recently been banned from all FIFA events because it had allowed such a dispute go to court.
So we came up with what I suppose could be deemed a risky and divisive plot – directly attacking Kelly and threatening to take the FA to court. Since Herbert Smith would never threaten legal action if there was no real intention of carrying it out, we agreed that all communication on this matter would be written by me personally, on Tottenham letter heading.
Before moving on to this story, I’d like to tell you about a little present I bought myself to cheer me up during the Venables litigation nightmare. Ann and I had got into the habit of chartering a boat for our summer holidays. On a visit to the South of France around June time – shortly after winning the Venables court case – the broker we’d previously chartered boats from, Nick Edmiston, took us to pick one for that year’s holiday. Only one was any good – The Margo Rose. He explained that it was actually locked up by a bank, who had repossessed it from its previous extravagant owner, a Swedish millionaire. The bank was employing a skeleton staff to keep the boat in good condition, otherwise their asset would erode.
Nick suggested I ask the bank whether they’d be prepared to let me charter the boat for a couple of weeks, on the basis that they might as well recover some money from a charterer. The bank, being a bank, rejected the proposition for the bizarre reason that they didn’t want to risk any liabilities. Who knows what liabilities they were referring to, but I wasn’t going to argue. However, they did say they’d be ready to take a write-down on this asset and flog it to me for $7m.
In the same way that Ann had poked me in the back when we first set eyes on Bramstons, she was doing it again as we were walking around this luxury boat. It was much better than the one we’d previously chartered. I told her she was nuts. ‘What am I going to do with a bloody boat? We only want it for a couple of weeks.’
She suggested we could spend more time on it in summer, instead of going to our regular haunts like Los Monteros in Spain or the South of France. We could take a few days off here and there and jump on the boat. I must admit, it sounded a great idea at the time. Ann was very excited, as the boat was done up really well, with a cinema, great bedrooms, dining rooms and all that stuff. On top of this, it was full of immaculate art and furniture.
I told Nick there was no way I was interested in buying a boat, but my wife was quite insistent that I pursue the matter. Then I laid it on about the recessionary times we were in and how the bank would have to wait a long time before they found another Hooray Henry to buy it. I put in a go away’ offer. ‘Tell them I’ll give them five million dollars and I’ll do the deal within a couple of days.’
‘Don’t be silly, Alan! That’s ridiculous! There’s no way they’ll sell this boat for five million – it’s worth at least eight. It cost fourteen million to build four years ago.’
I reminded him, ‘If it’s worth eight million and you’re such a bleedin’ good agent, why is it still sitting here in Golfe-Juan clocking up lots of costs?’
‘Well, it’s the economy at the moment.’
‘Exactly! Now, you go and tell the bank that I’ll give them five million dollars and if they’re interested, get back to me.’
Like all good agents, he was like a dog with a bone and of course he did get back to me. He told me he’d spoken to the bank and, as anticipated, they’d totally rejected my offer.
‘Great,’ I replied. ‘Now I can go and tell Ann they didn’t want to sell it.’
‘No, no, no, come on, Alan, you can do a bit better than that. How about six and a half million?’
‘Nick, you’re not hearing me, are you? I do not want a bloody boat, do you understand? I just thought that, as an impulse buy, it wasn’t a bad bargain for five million.’
‘But you’re not going to get it for five million.’
‘Yes I know, Nick. You’ve already said that. And I’m telling you the same thing again – just find me a boat to charter and I’ll be a happy bunny. Forget this boat and tell the bank to clear off.’
A couple of days later, he phoned me to say he’d got the bank talking sensibly and they were prepared to take $5.8m. By now I knew I had them on the hook. This type of asset was not the kind of thing people normally bought on the spur of the moment – you either wanted a boat or you didn’t – and in the strained economy at the time, there were no buyers.
‘Look, Nick, there’s this bloke Venables and I offered him three million pounds to buy his shares in a football club. He refused and took me to court and I’ve had a very, very hard time. The reason I’m offering you five million dollars is because, at today’s exchange rate, that’s exactly the same as the three million quid I was going to give him. Now, either you get me the bloody boat for five million dollars or stop driving me bleedin’ mad!’
They agreed on $5m in the end. In boating terms, I nicked it, not only because of the structure of the boat, but because the internal decoration this Champagne Charlie had spent his money on (or more likely the bank’s money on) must have been worth $3–4m alone.
According to maritime law, the boat had to be taken twelve miles out to sea, to no-man’s land, before the sale could take place and as I was buying it from a bank, they wanted everything conducted in the correct manner. We couldn’t have p
icked a worse day. The sea was choppy and I was turning greener as we were going along. Ann is a great sailor, she never seems to suffer from seasickness, but as a kid I suffered badly from motion sickness in cars. My daughter Louise is the same. I was feeling so ill, I told Nick Edmiston that he should get the bloody boat into port as quickly as possible and I joked that I might even pay him $5.2m – that’s how bad I felt.
The captain of the boat was a handsome young Italian by the name of Mario and the rest of the crew were also young fellows. I found out that the previous owner was a bit of a playboy and this boat had a reputation of being a party boat in the South of France. You could see that Captain Mario and his crew had enjoyed all this partying, but if they thought this type of lifestyle was going to carry on, they’d made a big mistake. They picked the wrong bloody owner with me, I can tell you that!
Mario told Nick to point out to me that all the art and other extras like camcorders and computers on the boat were not actually part of the assets the bank owned – they were the personal property of the owner. I took this at face value and told Nick that the deal was off. I’d agreed to buy the boat lock, stock and barrel and there was no way I was paying $5m if these items weren’t included. This put a real spanner in the works. To cut a long story short, after a load of calls on the satellite phone while we were bobbing up and down out at sea, the bank invited me to make a counter-offer.
When it comes to paintings, I can’t tell a Damien Hirst from a Geoff Hurst – I just like what I like, and Ann is the same. How much would twenty paintings and a few statues be worth? Not a clue! On our past trips around St Tropez we’d seen lots of artwork on sale in the many galleries there. I figured they couldn’t be worth more than a thousand or so each, so I threw a figure on the table of $150,000. The bank was obviously desperate, as they agreed to this reduction immediately, and I signed the sale agreement with the bank representative who was onboard.