Chapter One: How It Started

We had lived in Cheam on the South London and north Surrey borders for the majority of our lives. Married in 1973, I had been involved in the funeral profession for many years, almost the start of our marriage, and in 1990 we had started our own business. This was called Cheam Limousines.

January 1990 I bought my first commercial vehicle, which was a basic model Daimler DS420 limousine. For those unaware, this had no air conditioning, a fridge in winter and an oven in summer, made by Daimler/Jaguar as a specialist limousine. By four years we had added a Mercedes 500 S Class in white; another couple of years and we had expanded sufficiently to have five cars and two full time drivers as well as me and a team of part-time drivers. That was when the first major contract arrived.

Cheam Limousines had a nucleus of about a dozen travel agents in America sending their clients over to us for sight-seeing and airport transfers, and one of them mentioned that a major Californian travel company were expanding their European business. Based in Athens, operating there and Italy, they were expanding into Paris and London. After three fraught months of submitting plans to them, they decided on little Cheam Limousines in the UK, with five cars, and in Paris the largest chauffeur company with 95 vehicles. That was a real boost to us, one we were to capitalise on.

This was a superb time for us, the middle to late 1990s, plenty of money earned, good lifestyle, excellent friends, we were in our early 50s, good prospects, business expanding, and then we met Mark and Deanna.

They were clients from California, using the travel company for their journeys, real Anglophiles having been to the UK many times. They usually stayed at the Ritz Hotel in London, sometimes at the Savoy, and this fateful day I was their chauffeur for the journey between Gatwick and London. Cheam is about midway, me being me I suggested they could break their journey for a comfort stop. Mostly when this was offered the clients turned it down, but I suppose this pair wanted to see a local English family. I rang Pam, warned her we were stopping, and they stayed for dinner, sharing the family sausages and mash.

I walked them into Cheam village to the butchers, Mark and Deanna were impressed we still had a local family run shop selling meat, they chose the bangers, and after the early meal dropped them off back at their London hotel. I loved to share our environment with my guests, seeing it as a welcome to the UK. There was a standard patter as they were driven through the English countryside.

‘Over on your left you can see something you are not used to at home. It’s coloured green, and is called grass.’

Gasp of amazement.

‘Standing on that new phenomena is something tall, brown, and also has a different colour green attached. That is called a tree, and the green are ..leaves.’

Good gags, all part of the Cheam Limousines experience.

I thought no more of the couple until it was time to return to Gatwick. Details were exchanged, I looked his business up on the internet, which looked impressive.

Over the next five years they returned three times, each time I was their driver, and they were really interested when I told them that in 2003 Pam and I were selling up, moving to the south coast, to buy an eight bedroom B&B in a resort called Eastbourne. They had never heard of it, so looked it up to discover it was mid-way between Brighton and Hastings, population about 100,000, very genteel, with a pier and four theatres.

The reason for the move was quite simple - I was killing myself running the business. Five stones overweight, drinking too much, eating the wrong food when out on the road, I was fainting, nose bleeds, high blood pressure, all the usual symptoms. So the business was sold to one of our drivers for a reasonable figure, the family home was sold, and we came to live by the seaside.

The move occurred in June 2003, a Summer with the least amount of rain for many years. There were only six days that Summer when rain fell, which was to be a blessing for us, as the mid-terrace 1892 house required much work doing to it.

***

The details can be boring, not quite relevant to this tale, but in the space of less than three months we changed it from an eight bedroom house with one room en suite to a six bedroom one with all rooms complete with facilities. The Mercedes E class saloon as well as Pam’s Hyundai Accent saloon car came to the seaside with us, and Harry drove Pam’s little car to the tip over one hundred times. The superfluous Mercedes was soon sold.

Two neighbours were engaged as the builders and joint project managers, at a quite considerable fee on reflection, we were the labourers to cut down on expenses. There is a nationwide builders merchants’ called Wickes with a local branch, and I became such a regular, and also a nuisance with constant demands, that on one occasion I entered the store as one of the female staff was on the public address system. Her eyes followed me as I walked past her, she was incapable of speech, mute until I was gone, still with microphone in her hands.

Why? Well, just for example, Colin would send me there to get some plumbing. He was always specific, because he knew that I am an impractical man, with hands only there to use a computer, or feed my face, certainly not to hold a saw, or a hammer, or a screwdriver, definitely not a paintbrush. Colin knew he had to write down specifically what was required, as I had a habit of returning with the incorrect item, albeit only marginally wrong, but you could be sure that it would not fit in the designated hole. Hence the nervousness of the Wickes staff, dreading my entrance as they would be required to issue a refund, and then walk with me to the correct shelf, which frequently was lacking the exact required item.

That was my introduction to the Eastbourne hotel business.

We immediately became members of the local Hotel Association, quite active socially, and it was strange to sit with over a dozen other men over a delicious meal with red wine discussing the merits of which store sold the best sausages for guests at breakfast. Bizarre, really.

We opened our doors to guests in late September, had missed the whole of the money earning Summer season, so were ready to welcome the non-existent Winter guests. The house had previously been run on an economy basis mainly for students, so we had to create a new market from nothing, at the wrong end of the season. Lousy timing, but it wasn’t our fault, as we had been trying to move in for a long time, with solicitors as usual holding up procedures.

One idea I had that first winter was to prove quite successful. I purchased some bottles of inexpensive wine during a shopping visit to France, and then went into all thirty three Eastbourne estate agents, with a bottle for each one and some business cards and brochures. The impact of a free bottle of wine was great, and the guest house had quite a few people stay with us who were recommended in this way.

We had kept in touch with our Californian friends, who were to come and stay with us on two occasions as paying guests. The foursome socialised, they came to the Hotel Association’s annual black tie dinner, they came to the group events, fitting in very well. Mark and Deanna just loved the feel of the area, as it is in a wide bay, with Beachy Head cliffs to the west, and Hastings to the east. It has the South Downs five miles behind, so the atmosphere is conducive to a pleasant stay. Okay, there’s some wind, but it is a very easy climate to live in, which coming from California they were to appreciate.

We had owned the B&B for just under three years, gaining more success each season, when I had a phone call from Mark quite out of the blue. One evening he rang and asked if we would like to go into business with him and his wife to buy a larger hotel. In Eastbourne. Budget to be discussed later, this was just a preliminary call.

What to do, risk everything, or stay where you were?

Staying where we were was just an option, as we had a sizeable mortgage, and would be paying it off a long way in the future. By this time we were just short of 60, not fancying the prospect of working until we were in our mid 70s before being able to retire. There’s not much glamour, being a B&B owner, you get up early to start preparing the breakfasts, and there’s not a lot of pleasure cleaning a shower, let alone head stuck down a toilet. Two of the toilets had macerators, those strange contraptions that munch the effluent so it will go through a smaller waste pipe. On one memorable occasion some idiot guest blocked it with something too big, despite a large notice on the wall, and Harry had to clear. Unfortunately, the neighbour who came to assist thought he knew everything, turning on the power while it was disconnected, effluent covering walls, ceilings, floor, and me. I had to strip to my underpants in the back garden and wash off everything under a hose with cold water. It was such a hot April day that my mouth was really dry, so licked my lips. Before realising how badly I was covered. Yuck.

Did I embrace the prospect of performing this into my dotage?

However, buying a larger hotel in partnership with people we had only met previously on half a dozen occasions, albeit a week at a time, was not a decision to be taken lightly. Mark was very persuasive, holding out the future of hotel ownership, maybe a group of half a dozen similarly sized establishments, quality guests, not getting hands dirty, financial security for the rest of our lives.

We went for it.

***

‘So Mark, what budget do we have? Do we have a million? Two million? I really don’t know what to look at, what our price range is.’

‘Harry, look at it this way, we will know when we see the right hotel. It might take a few weeks, it might take a few months, but we will know when the right one comes along. Just keep on looking, then let me know.’

It was obvious to us that Mark and Deanna flew first class everywhere, they stayed first class, they used the travel company Cheam Limousines worked for and their client list was pretty wealthy, so I was aware that Pam and I were entering into a business plan with someone of substance. Just to probe, we suggested he had a look at one on the market for £2.4 million.

‘That’s okay Harry, have a look and let me know.’

Mark didn’t even blanch, which was certainly out of the prospective range. We knew that after we had paid off our B&B mortgage and financial commitments we would be left with about £50k, so the main financial burden was going to fall on Mark’s shoulders. There wasn’t the slightest doubt about his probity.

Mark and Deanna’s business was mail order all over the USA, and had a good turnover and healthy customer base. He had been going for over twenty years, advertised in all the speciality magazines, and was the leader in his market. Just to give you an example of the home trappings, London Transport had a policy of selling off a large number of Route master double decker buses. The phone conversation with Harry went like this.

‘Harry, can you have a look at seeing how much it would cost to transport a London transport bus back to California. How long it would take, The practicalities, that kind of thing.’

He bought one. Paid for it to be shipped over to California, which cost over £5,000 alone, then restored it to a high degree. This was all done on a whim by an ostensibly wealthy American.

They owned a 40ft mobile home, touring round the US as much as business commitments permitted, but in reality it was parked up for years at a time, as they tended to come to the UK for holidays. Another expensive toy.

What should have concerned me was a phone call I received from Mark when we were at the looking at hotels stage. As Mark’s father in law worked with him, he had received an e-mail from a USA based lottery company stating he had won over $1m. Mark rang me for my opinion, if his father in law should contact them to claim the prize. Mark was asked one simple question.

‘Does your father in law play the lottery?’

‘No’.

‘Then how could he possibly have won anything then.’

End of conversation, but there should have been alarm bells for obvious reasons.

As it happened, Pam didn’t like the £2.4m seafront hotel, it was a lovely building, but the owner was an idiot who hadn’t spent anything on it. There were 46 bedrooms, superb location, but it was obvious all rooms were very tired and another million would have been necessary to get it up to standard. We looked elsewhere. As it transpires, this particular hotel did ultimately change hands to an upmarket consortium, has had a lot of money spent and invested, but despite its prestigious prime location has proved to be a major white elephant. Just goes to show that some properties just can’t make money.

The agent told us about a reasonably sized hotel adjacent to the seafront. It had been derelict for at least six years. We were showed around with lots of health warnings. In through the main door visitors were confronted by a reception desk. Behind the desk there were no floorboards, and you could see into the depths of the basement. Walking around, it was a wonder to all that it had only been six years, the last paying guests being a coach party with lowered standards. The room rate was considerably cheaper as well.

We all went all round this hotel very carefully, ignoring the missing floor sections, it had a lot of potential. It would have been a necessity to clean the place up as well, removing the large dead rats from the basement (yes, really), but it was a lovely elegant façade with a decent back garden/terrace for secluded exclusive guest use. The cost was around half a million pounds, but a buyer had to look at spending twice that amount just to get it up to standard, and the same again to make it a really classy hotel to attract the right kind of guest that Mark was interested in.

Any prospective purchaser was also looking at a year-long building project, with the prospect of longer if the builders were errant. The budget would have had to be flexible, because you never knew what you were going to find requiring fixing in an 1890 building such as this. Not for the faint hearted expecting fast returns on capital investment.

That autumn Mark and Deanna came to stay with us in our guest house for a week. They never offered to pay for their accommodation, which was a first. The couple didn’t do too much, just enjoyed staying in the premier bedroom, walking along the seafront, eating in the best local pub, The Marine. After a couple of days of this idyllic stay, I received a phone call from another hotelier.

‘Harry, I know that Mark and Deanna are with you at present. Are you still looking at properties?’

‘Yup, what do you have in mind?’

‘Well, I know that David and Louise are thinking of selling the Sheldon, but haven’t done anything about it. They can’t make up their minds, she wants to go to Spain for a year or so, he wants to keep the hotel. Any sale would have to be discreet, there would be agents involved, but I just wonder if you are interested.’

‘Certainly would be, what would be the price range?’

‘Just shy of a million.’

‘That could be very interesting. What would we do next?’

‘Let me have a word with David, sound him out. But don’t do anything yet, that is important, it’s David we have to convince here.’

After coming off the phone, I turned to Pam, Mark and Deanna. ‘That was a pal of mine, he has heard that the Sheldon COULD be up for sale, but we have to approach this very carefully.’

‘Where is it?’

I told them.

Despite warnings to be discreet, that was it, he had the bit between his teeth, and he was off for a walk to have a look, even though he was told to go nowhere near the place.

Of course, Mark had to go alone, because I didn’t want the seller to appreciate the enthusiasm my partner had for the project. He was simply desperate to buy somewhere, anywhere would do, as long as it was a project he could work with as soon as possible.

He got back, having talked to the owner’s son, who had given him a look round. Before anyone knew it, an offer of £900,000 was made, no consultation with his potential business partners, the bid of course was rejected. The price was £975,000, and the owner wasn’t prepared to budge, no surprise really, because he knew a sucker when he saw one.

As a builder, he had bought the hotel as a project, somewhat run down, so converted all the downstairs into four very large apartment rooms. They were stunning, a credit to his skills, just a shame that the other twenty four rooms didn’t match.