The arrival of the Peugeot 405 marked something of an upgrade in my company car line-up and also something of an upgrade in my career path.
For the previous three years, I'd been group editor at Sharman Newspapers, running their free newspapers - the Peterborough Standard, King's Lynn Trader and the Rutland and South Lincs Classified.
It was an interesting job and I enjoyed the mix of editorial and commercial responsibilities and also heading up a team of about a dozen journalists. We punched above our weight, often beating competition to stories and it wasn't hard to look good within the Sharman group where standards were pretty low.
I remember one week, we had pretty much put the Peterborough paper to bed on the Wednesday with just a few pages to clear on Thursday morning before going to press. That Wednesday evening, a fire started in the escalators leading up to what was then the main tube concourse at King's Cross station in London. The fire spread rapidly and plastic ceiling tiles created poisonous fumes. More than a hundred people died.
We realised quickly that lots of Peterborough people, who worked in London and commuted via King's Cross, would be involved (and possibly dead). I got a call from our chief reporter to tell me the fire had happened and we dispatched a couple of reporters to Peterborough station to interview people as they got off the train.
One of the changes I'd brought in was to get reporters to carry simple point-and-shoot cameras so they could take their own pictures of things like head-shots. Previously, reporters had written words and photographers had taken pictures, so this wasn't a popular move among either group and the local branch of the NUJ had been involved.
On this evening, the change was critical in gathering the news. Reporters were able to spend a couple of hours at the station and ask people about their experiences as they came through the turnstiles. We got great eyewitness accounts of the biggest story of the year and were able to localise a national story.
We remade the first few pages of that week's newspaper to carry a full account. Our daily rivals in Peterborough hadn't thought to interview people at the station and were carrying pretty much a Press Association wire account of the disaster.
It was a good night and we covered the story really well. As well as getting lots of Peterborough people who had been involved, we also got people from March and Wisbech and my team were smart enough to get pictures and interview those as well so we could offer the story to sister newspapers.
On Thursday morning first thing, I called the editors of those two titles to tell them what we had and it ranks as one of the most frustrating hours of my life. First, they were not good journalists; what news sense they may have had was long atrophied and they also viewed me and my operation with suspicion and contempt. Because we worked for free titles (and they were paid-for) they considered themselves better than us and also this was their press day and they'd already put their front pages together. Changing the lead now would mean a remake of several pages and they weren't that clever at making quick changes.
I called the editor of the Cambs Times and couldn't believe it when he said his paper was done for the week. There was still five hours before he went to press and he could have easily gone big with this story (March man's account of London horror fire - how I escaped the King's Cross inferno). I managed to browbeat him into taking the story, but wished I hadn't because I think he used a single-column on page three. The worst was Roger Green, editor of the Wisbech Standard. He couldn't understand why I thought he'd be interested in a London story. The answer was: "because there's a Wisbech man involved you fuckwit." He didn't run the story until the following week - nine days after the event and he rarely spoke to me after that (I don't think he liked being called a fuckwit).
By the way, the Urban Dictionary describes a fuckwit thus: A person who is not only lacking in clue but is apparently unable or unwilling to acquire clue even when handed it on a plate in generous portions. I think I got it spot on. A few years later, I made Roger Green redundant. Sadly, he was killed in a car crash on the Wisbech bypass, so he didn't enjoy a long, happy retirement.
Well, back to my Peugeot 405 STi. The reason that I acquired this car was that I had a new job. We had been told that the Sharman family was to sell their newspaper group to the Thomson Newspaper Group, one of the largest publishers of regional newspapers in the country. The non-family senior management - the likes of Roger Green - were terrified, they were convinced we would be sold and closed. I remember Gavin Fenton, general manager of Peterborough office voicing these concerns to me. I told him that was crazy - why would anyone buy a newspaper group to close it down? "We'll have to wait and see, I suppose," he said.
I didn't wait to see. I knew there would be change and I reckoned that change meant opportunities, so I found out who was in charge at Thomson's and wrote to Bill Heeps, their chief executive and told him that I was excited to hear the news of the sale and I would be keen to have a role within the new operation.
I didn't hear back from Bill for a week or so, but he was due to meet the senior staff at our head office in Fengate and he called me to say he'd see me there. He said he was pleased to get my letter and he'd fix up a meeting with Keith Barwell, who was going to be running the group, and there would definitely be an opening for me.
He asked me if I'd introduce him to senior staff, so my colleagues gathered in the boardroom for nibbles and wine were gobsmacked to find me introducing Bill Heeps to them and him treating me like a favourite son. My letter had clearly struck the target, I was the only person to have stepped forward and because Bill was also an ex-journalist, I think he felt comfortable with me.
The craziest part of the evening was when I introduced Bill to John Sharman, senior of the Sharman brothers and chairman of Sharman Newspapers. John had been negotiating with Keith Barwell regarding the sale but had not met Heeps. He must have been staggered to find himself being introduced by me and the look on his face was priceless.
However, John was also an opportunist and immediately got through the pleasantries to ask if Thomson's needed any non-exec directors on the newly acquired group. He'd be happy to help. He was charmingly brushed off. He was desperate to know how I knew Bill Heeps. I didn't let on the truth and told him that I'd come across him before I worked for Sharman's.
Soon afterwards I was invited to an interview in Luton with Keith Barwell. Keith was a character, full of energy and during our chat, he kept jumping up out of his chair and plunging his hands deep into his pockets, pacing about the room and sitting down again. He offered me a job as assistant MD with Garethward Ltd, the company that would run the old Sharman operation and I said thank you very much.
It meant a large pay rise for me and also a new car. Ben Clingain, the new MD, told me to sort out my car and basically left it to me to choose. We didn't have a company car policy and I thought I was pushing the envelope by choosing a sporty 2-litre saloon. Later, I learned that I might have gone for a BMW or a Mercedes and got away with it.
Barwell had started the Luton Herald and had made a small fortune from a group of free newspapers in Bedfordshire. He was so successful that he had closed down the Hemel Hempstead Gazette (owned by Thomson's). Heeps had thought Thomson's should get a piece of the free-newspaper action and so he bought Barwell's business, made Barwell MD of Thomson Free Newspapers and gave him a pot of cash to acquire other groups throughout the UK. The plan was to have one free newspaper group covering the entire country, with a common brand and one rate card so cross-selling of ads became easy and ad agencies could book regional campaigns by talking to one man instead of 20. It was a great idea, eventually sunk by over-ambition and the economic crash of the 1980s. Sits-vac advertising and property ads were the essential fuel for these big free titles and when they dried up, the model no longer worked. While the lean-and-mean Sharmans would have battened down and weathered the storm, Thomson Free Newspapers was to be sunk.
Its legacy, if anything, was a series of culture shocks to Thomson Regional Newspapers (the parent company) which helped them rethink their business for the better. Challenging established thinking is always a good thing, sometimes by allowing you to steal good ideas and sometimes by allowing you to learn from other people's mistakes.
The aspect of TFN culture which had the biggest effect on the parent group was the company car policy (or lack of it). You have to appreciate what a massive perk the company car was back in the '80s and how it defined the status of your job (and your importance). Keith Barwell used company cars like carrots, so if you hit your targets and he liked you, you might be driving around in a pretty good car. By way of contrast, ad managers and editors in the Sharman group has 1.6-litre saloons - Vauxhall Cavaliers or Ford Cortinas - while Luton Herald Series ad managers drove C-Class Mercedes.
Jealousy being what it was, the generosity of company car allocation in Thomson Free Newspapers really grated with the parent group, whose MDs had a choice of either a Vauxhall Senator, Rover 800 or a Ford Granada. Keith Barwell believed that perks and incentives were an essential element of his success and he guarded our company cars.
However, there was one famous incident where things came to a head. He'd told his MD at Luton - Enzo Testa (a wheeler-dealer of Italian extraction) that if he hit his targets he could have a Ferrari as his company car. Enzo hit his targets, making TFN a shedload of money in the process, but when Barwell put in to the main group to buy the Ferrari, it caused a sensation and was subsequently blocked. It was a badge too far in the eyes of the Thomson executive.
Barwell was now in a tricky place - he'd made a promise to Testa and Testa had delivered his side of the bargain. As a compromise, he gave his new car - a Jaguar V12 - to Testa and bought himself a new one. There was nothing Thomson's could do and you can imagine the look on the faces of their MDs (driving around in their Ford Granadas) while a TFN MD had a V12 Jag! Soon the MD of Northampton Post Series had a Jaguar, while Ben Clingain (in charge at Garethward - the old Sharman group) had a Range Rover V8.
I probably sold myself a little short with my choice of car - a Peugeot 405 STi, but I was fairly happy with it, apart from some steering wheel judder at speed (as if the wheels were out of balance). That was the biggest issue and one that I never really solved. I don't think the garage had a clue - Peugeot was not a mainstream manufacturer in this country at that time and their dealers tended to be smaller businesses. My car came from a garage out in the fens between Wisbech and Long Sutton. They sold tractors and agricultural equipment, with a couple of car franchises (Peugeot and Subaru, I think) tacked on the side.
The engine was a four-cylinder, eight-valve job with a maximum 120bhp and a decent spread of torque, so it pulled well and was nice to drive. Top speed was 122mph and 0-60mph was 11 seconds.
The main problem with the car, apart from the juddery front wheels, was its dominant understeer. It really didn't want to turn into a corner and the lack of power steering added to the driver input needed. You spent a lot of your time at the wheel fighting the car to get it into a corner. On long fast bends, you'd be arm-wrestling the bloody thing to keep it on line.
I think it had central locking, there were certainly electric windows and front head restraints. It was a heavy car and seemed quite well built, probably the last of the heavyweight Peugeots.
The front seats were quite short, I'd have liked a bit more leg support, but it wasn't a bad car to drive. I clocked up a few miles between Peterborough and Middlesbrough when we were transferring print and closing the press at Fengate; also between Peterborough and Cheltenham when we were negotiating with a company to provide Apple Mac computers to allow full-page make-up on screen.
The longest family trip I can remember undertaking was for a holiday in Scotland. We rented a cottage called Tangy Lodge on the Cambletown penisula. It was a lovely place, looking west across the sea. You could see Gigha, Islay and Jura (Inner Hebrides) and also the north coast of Ireland (it's amazing how close it is).
I had the 405 for just under three years, until I left to become MD of Central Press Features. After three years, it was showing some signs of wear and tear. The main bodywork fault was a really small one, but it really stood out. The car had a black rubbing strip through the bumpers with a red strip running all the way around, which continued along the side of the car doors as a protective strip. However, they'd obviously sourced two types of red plastic strip and the one along the sides of the car faded to pink in the sun within two years. It spoilt the whole look of the car.
My next car, also a company car, was a little less sporty, but a much better car. It also had power steering and so driving it felt as if I'd been carrying a couple of heavy shopping bags and put them down at last. It was, guess what, another Vauxhall Cavalier - my third and last.
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