What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (16 page)

For any youngsters looking in, there's a business lesson to be learned here. What I've just described to you is building a relationship with your supplier. I don't blame Gulu one tiny bit for demanding cash up front because he was dealing not just with me, but with loads of market traders, as well as a bunch of flyboys. I would come across these crooks in the months and years ahead; people who would think nothing of writing out cheques that bounced.

So what happened over the course of maybe a couple of months was that I established myself with Gulu to the extent that, although he perhaps didn't quite trust me 100 per cent yet, he made the calculated decision to give me a bit of credit - and that was because I hadn't let him down. And I've never let anyone down since. It illustrates an important point: it's what you do in practice that gains you business credibility, not hype or empty promises. I guess it comes down to the old adage: actions speak louder than words.

The whole area around the City of London, from Middlesex Street to City Road, had importers of 'fancy goods'. Things like transistor radios and high-intensity lamps fell into this category. However, most of the importers were
effectively selling the same stuff, just branded differently. Some importers, such as East West - again run by an Asian family, the Shahwanis - sold rather more up-market technical goods. Fronting for them was a gaunt-looking gentleman called Peter Jones, their sales manager.

Around this time, I became aware that all these importers had brand names. Gulu had Binatone (Bina being the name of his sister); others I bought from had names like Vantone and Fantavox. It was a prestige thing - it gave you a kind of credibility with the retailers. If nothing else, it was a statement that you must definitely be the importer.

Most of the time, traders like me wanted to make sure we weren't buying off a middleman. You knew you were buying from a middleman if the diamond-shaped panel had been cut out of the shipping carton. Every importer had its name printed in that panel, so that the dockers could recognise the batches of cargo. If you saw 'J PARKER' printed in the diamond, then you knew the stuff had come from Gulu. So if you didn't want the next guy to know where the goods had come from, you cut out the diamond.

I decided that I would use my own brand name on some products, even though I bought them from an importer. I came up with the name Amstrad', from A M S Trading. My first Amstrad-branded product was 1,000 gas cigarette lighters, bought from an importer by the name of Ezra Elias, who was just round the corner from Gulu's gaff. His brand was Vantone. And from East West I ordered 1,000 intercom sets, again branded Amstrad.

The goods took six weeks to arrive. When they came, I was so pleased I proudly showed them around. Most people didn't give a toss and said, 'Yeah, that's the same as the Vantone or the East West product,' or 'Who cares - what's the price?' But the smaller punters, outside London, maybe were impressed.

*

Meanwhile, Johnnie hadn't given up. He was still doing his best to try to get rid of me. One Sunday, I got a phone call from Ann. Alan,' she said, 'you've got to get round here quick.'

It turned out that Johnnie had arranged for a boy to come to their house to meet her. This boy was recommended by Auntie Hettie, a real sergeant major. He was a professional, could recite from the Torah from scratch, came from a lovely family and spoke with a rather posh accent - the absolute epitome of Johnnie's target son-in-law. Johnnie had only gone and set this up without Ann's knowledge! And she was supposed to sit there, all prim and proper, with this fellow.

Ann was quite smart. She immediately phoned her friend Susan Frunt and asked her to come round at the same time and she hauled me in too. It was a most ridiculous situation. The poor fellow turned up on this arranged date to find Susan Frunt, myself and Ann. Ann's idea was maybe this geeky SuperJew would be right up Susan's alley. And I would be there with Ann, so the message being sent to this fellow was
'Hello?
This is my
boyfriend
!
'

It's unbelievable to think of the lengths Johnnie went to. He must have been fuming. I cannot for the life of me understand, knowing Ann's character over all the years we've been married, where she found the strength to overcome this pressure. Bearing in mind that she was not the type of person to do something out of sheer belligerence - just to upset or offend her parents - she really must have felt I was worth the hassle.

Johnnie must have got the hint eventually because a few months later, when Johnnie and Rita had disappeared into the kitchen, Izzy whispered to me, 'Here, Alan, why don't you introduce Ann to
your
parents? Why don't you get engaged?'

'What?' I said.

'Yeah, introduce Ann to your parents. And why don't you get engaged? You know, do something about it?
Are
you going to get engaged?'

This was in my mind, but I guess I didn't have the courage to bring it up.

Later, I told Ann what Izzy had said. She was a little embarrassed and just laughed, but I pushed her further on it and asked, 'Where is all this coming from?'

She told me that Izzy had been in the room when Johnnie and Rita were having a conversation about me. They'd mentioned how unusual it was that I hadn't yet introduced Ann to my parents and wondered whether this relationship was really serious.

Ann's family was right. It suddenly dawned on me that in all the time I'd known Ann, she hadn't met my mum and dad. I then realised that a lot of my friends also hadn't met my mum and dad. In fact, most of them hadn't even been to my flat. My honest belief is this: my flat was in a completely different league to the houses of Steve, Tony and, to a certain extent, Geoff. I guess I was embarrassed. How ridiculous.

It's quite sad, when you think about it, to be ashamed of your family home, although I certainly wasn't ashamed of my parents. Anyway, this was a wrong I had to put right immediately. All at once, I realised my selfishness; my complete lack of thought.

I hauled Ann up there as soon as I possibly could. Of course, she was well received by Mum and Dad, as well as by Daphne and Harold, who happened
to be there that day. Daphne said to me afterwards, 'Ooh, Alan, I didn't realise she was such a tall girl, your girlfriend. Funny, I had visions of my baby brother having a little girlfriend.' I never quite understood what she meant by that.

A few days later, all the boys came up to my flat. I must have been as thick as a plank because Steve had been dropping hints for the past couple of years. When I eventually said, 'Come up,' he couldn't stop himself from saying, At last!'

Of course there was no problem when they came into the flat. They're nice blokes, no airs and graces. They just sat themselves down and started chatting with my mum and dad. No trouble at all. What an idiot I'd been. And, on reflection, how selfish I must have seemed, going to their homes and accepting their hospitality for years without reciprocating. It wasn't that I was stingy, but I
was
embarrassed. Quite unjustifiably so.

Ann and I went out to the West End one night and on the way home we started to chat about past events and how funny Izzy was with his interventions. And then, as you do, I went a bit quiet.

Finally, I popped the question. It wasn't really a blunt 'Will you marry me?' It was more of a discussion between us along the lines of 'I suppose we should get married then.' Both of us were completely committed to each other and I guess getting married and spending the rest of our lives together was something we both felt was inevitable.

We were both quite shy at the time and there was a kind of embarrassment and difficulty between us in getting it out in the open. There was certainly no going down on one knee, with a rose, in a restaurant. In fact we were going over the Stratford flyover in the minivan at the time - can you imagine? Now you must
really
be asking what the hell she saw in me.

I don't recall Ann's response being one of great enthusiasm. I think she said, 'Well, I suppose so.' Maybe my character was already starting to rub off on her!

The next step was to discuss this with Ann's parents. I would have to build up to that. One day during the following week, when Ann's parents were in the kitchen, I said to Izzy, 'We're thinking of getting engaged.'

'Well, tell
him
then,' he said, nodding his head in Johnnie's direction. There was mutual respect between Izzy and Johnnie, but you wouldn't think so if you saw them together. Izzy was Rita's father and she, being the kind person she was, insisted that he come and live with them and the two children. To give credit to Johnnie, he was a gentleman in accepting this situation - not many people would. It did lead to friction sometimes, though. If you
can imagine a scene from
The Royle Family
- with Jim constantly resenting his mother-in-law - well, it was a bit like that. Nowhere near as brutal, of course, but there was definitely some banter going on. Sometimes they wouldn't speak to each other for a while; other times they seemed okay. It was hard to keep up with them.

Looking back, Izzy loved Johnnie and thought he was a great fellow, but I never noticed any warmth from Johnnie towards his father-in-law, though he would always sing Izzy's praises as a master carpenter, and a master carpenter he was.

Anyway, Izzy said to me, 'Tell him.'

Of course, I had to wait for the right moment. In came Johnnie, who sat himself down on the armchair to watch TV, and Rita joined him. Ann sat next to me on the sofa and good old Izzy looked at me, nodded, then got up and shuffled out of the room with his walking stick.

'You all right, Dad?' Rita said.

'Yes, I'm fine, I'm fine.'

And that was the moment. Johnnie's back was turned to me when I started to speak to him. Ann and I have thought about it and we want to get engaged.'

He certainly didn't spin round and say, 'Congratulations.' He said, 'Fine, okay. Well, have you thought about what you're going to do, where you're going to live, how you're going to make a living?'

I said, 'Yes, I'm working for myself and I'm doing all right. Ann's working too, and everything will be fine.'

They reluctantly accepted the situation. And, to be fair to Rita, she sprang out of the chair and said to me, 'Welcome to the family.'

Johnnie, to use one of his terms, must have been silently plutzing. One day I'm going to write an English-Yiddish dictionary. It's difficult to explain just what plutzing means to a non-Jew, but I'll have a stab at it. It's a word that encapsulates how you feel when you have to grin and bear something you don't really agree with and you don't want to happen. It can be used in different ways - 'He's plutzing,' 'He plutzed,' 'He will plutz.' But you can't say, 'He's a plutzer' - that doesn't work.

My half-Jewish hairdresser, Robert Bell, sometimes uses Yiddish expressions completely out of context and makes us all laugh. It's like watching a white man trying to rap.

Anyway, that was it. Officially engaged. Now I had to go home and tell my mum and dad. I got in about half past ten and they were already in bed, so I stood outside their door and whispered, Are you still awake?'

They said, 'Yes. Why, what's up?'

Through the door, I said, 'Ann and I got engaged tonight.'

Silence.

Would the door be flung open any moment? Would there be jumping for joy? No.

'Oh! Okay, good, very nice. Very, very nice,' from my mum. And a barely audible grunt from my dad.

That's the type of people they were, I'm afraid. To be fair, when you look at the horrible upbringings they had, particularly my mother, who had nasty, uncaring parents, it's no surprise. Mum was a hard-nut, no question about it, but with a kind heart.

Ann also agrees that my mum was very tough, but quiet and observant with it, intelligently picking up things and really understanding what was going on, but keeping things bottled up inside her. In Ann's opinion, my father came across as a more caring person.

Ann's family set great store by saying and doing the right thing, and I had a lot to learn in this area. On several occasions during our courtship, I was invited to Ann's house for a traditional Friday night dinner. After four or five such occasions when I'd turned up without bringing anything with me - not so much as a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates - Johnnie got annoyed. Sadly, I had put Ann under a load of family pressure again.

Looking back, it makes me cringe to think of turning up without showing some gratitude, but it gives you an indication of how unaware I was of these social graces. Eventually, Ann plucked up the courage to tell me, 'If you come round to our house for dinner, please bring something along for my mum because my dad's getting a bit annoyed.'

I was embarrassed and I swung the other way to such an extent that Rita turned to me one day and said, 'Please stop this - you don't need to do this each and every time you come round.'

I also spread the news of our engagement to all my friends. If I remember rightly, Maureen and Malcolm had beaten us to it and were already engaged. Steve was being silent, while Sandra, to use the new word you've just learned, was plutzing. Geoff and Tony didn't want to listen. They were not interested in this settling-down stuff.

Ann and I agreed on a savings strategy. She was doing very well as a hairdresser, and had been since the time I was at Richard Thomas & Baldwins. She still reminds me to this day that she was earning more than I was then. She was a great hairdresser and although her basic pay was peanuts, she was sought after by the clients and earned nearly all her money
from tips. We decided to start saving for a house of our own, an unbelievable objective in that day and age. For example, when Daphne and Harold got married, they moved into a rented flat above a shop in Clapton. When Derek got married to Brenda, they did the same. Shirley was the only one who had her own house, her Harold being rather well-to-do. But most people tended to start off by renting a flat somewhere.