Over the years my companies have owned probably £1 billion worth of property
in Glasgow but, in my ignorance, I’d never ventured more than 10 minutes
outside the centre. I love Glasgow, it’s a great city. I just did not know,
and indeed had no reason to know, the not-so-nice bits.
I was shocked when I arrived in Possilpark. I was intimidated, I’ll happily
admit that. The apartment I’d been given for my 10 days was truly horrible,
with vomit on the carpet and mould on the walls, but after 48 hours it
became my sanctuary because I’d seen worse. That dump was my home in no time.
I was horrified by what I witnessed on the streets. Because I have Scottish
business partners, people like Sir Tom Hunter, I’ve been broken in on the
accent front so there wasn’t the baptism of fire that others might
have had. I did meet this one guy, though, who didn’t make it onto the show.
I went to get something to eat and he came up to me. He’d been in prison
five times, had 11 stab wounds, was 31 days off heroin and on methadone. He
sat and shared my pizza. I couldn’t catch a word he was saying but I
understood him all the same. A nice man, but let’s say I was not
unthreatened.
Actually that’s the one thing I’ve always found about Glaswegians: regardless
of circumstance they have always been incredibly friendly. Near my awful
flat there was a parade of shops on Hawthorn Street, names like Laura’s
Lunches, Albert’s Grocers, and everyone in there took care to welcome me.
Albert himself is a Pakistani gentleman, probably been here for 30 years. He
was so unbelievably kind to this newcomer. That wouldn’t happen to a
stranger in London, not a chance.
My wife and I have been giving to charity for decades so the idea of writing
some cheques didn’t excite me particularly. For me the challenge of Secret
Millionaire was being ‘Nick’, some guy on a social work course, and losing
the identity that I’ve built up over the years. I wanted to take myself out
of my comfort zone, to be liberated from being who I am.
It’s an honest concern if you’ve been rich for a long time, that you can’t be
sure if the people around you like you because you’re you, or because your
money is fun to be around. Some people like musicians, some like
footballers, some people like cash. There are groupies for all sorts of
things. Stripped of all that, what impression would I make? What would I
have to say, would I have anything in common with people whose lives are so
different?
In the event, they were the teachers and I was the pupil. Ronnie at the Forum
on Disability never turns anyone away. She’s such a feisty lady that I was
in awe. Despite serious personal issues and chronic pain she has created a
drop-in centre for the physically and mentally impaired, people with tragic
stories, some of whom haven’t left their homes in 10 years. It’s the one
place that these folk can go in the daytime, their only social interaction,
and without Ronnie it would cease to exist.
Without wishing to sound too gushy about my experience in Glasgow, it’s true
to say that I had a lifelong fear of people with disabilities, and what a
waste of my time I now realise that was. I was volunteering at the coalface,
meeting people and speaking to them and seeing that they had simply fallen
through society’s net.
When Ronnie hears of someone in need, she arranges for them to be picked up
and brought into the fold. Meanwhile, the other magnificent volunteers run a
snack bar, organise activities and a project called Cook ’n’ Care that takes
fresh food to people in the community — the five or 10 minutes to be with
someone who will not see another human being that day.
That’s how I met Marion, a poor dear woman, of whom it is impossible to get
across on TV how profoundly disgusting her home had become — cat faeces on
her bed and on her kitchen counter, piles of bin bags everywhere. She hadn’t
bathed in two years and her flat, unsurprisingly, stank. She couldn’t leave
it, she couldn’t move well and her best friend had died two years
previously, so she had nobody to care for, or care for her. “I used to be
house-proud”, she said, so she knew the extent of the squalor. She didn’t
have the luxury of being unaware of her circumstances. That cat was her best
friend, her only company, and yet the council wouldn’t rehouse her with the
animal. Three weeks after we filmed there she was given a new home, so maybe
the world works in mysterious ways.
I formed a connection with seven or eight people in the 10 days I was in Glasgow,
so I had other cheques to write even if they weren’t shown on TV. Of the
people you saw — Ronnie, Andrew who lost his sight in just three weeks, and
Lynne \ from Riding for the Disabled — I was in contact with them all today.
Not because I want to check up on them all the time, but when I’ve got a
minute I like to see how they’re going with an e-mail or a call. I like
them, these are good people.
I’ve offered my financial support to the two main projects for the next five
years. Let’s wait and see what happens in year six. It is essential that the
people who run charities are competent to do so. There’s no point in handing
over £400,000 on day one and asking the organisers to spend it prudently.
They do need to be benchmarked.
Yes, I gave a lot of money away but it’s all relative isn’t it? It’s not how
much the cheques are for but how much benefit is to be had from the pounds
sterling. Giving is the best bloody thing in life if you’re in my fortunate
position, but it can’t be done irresponsibly. I’m wealthy, but with the
scale of the problems to deal with, it could all go very quickly. Cook ’n’
Care has replaced its kitchen with its capital sum and now feeds 400 people
rather than 200. It’s still done on a shoestring, they’re not wasteful, but
the ongoing funds will give Ronnie and Lynne at Riding for the Disabled the
opportunity to plan beyond the current year for the first time.
With Andrew, I struggled more with how to help him. His friends had ditched
him, he was angry, drinking too much and I can’t blame him for it. God
forbid any one of us should be in that situation. Staying in his flat
listening to loud music and dreaming of happier times in Ibiza was a
reasonable if destructive response to his circumstances. He had no life,
until the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association brought him Oscar. It is an
incredible relationship — it’s intense. Oscar is Andrew’s eyes. That dog
gave him his future back, let him leave his home and gave him back the pride
and independence that a young man needs. It wasn’t a difficult choice in the
end. What would make this man truly happy was the chance to give ‘sight’ to
someone else by giving him funds to donate to his favourite charity.
The Secret Millionaire is a genuine reality show. Sure, they might ask you to
do a retake walking down the road if someone walks in front of you, but when
it comes to sincere human reaction there’s no faking it. I went back to see
Andrew after six weeks and he surprised me by bringing a puppy that was
already in training to be a guide dog. It was the most beautiful dog you’ve
ever seen and soon it will be someone else’s eyes. He gave the cheque to the
lady from the guide dogs charity and my heart swelled for him. It was a
proud moment. What is it they say? Truly it is better to give than to
receive.
I am in Glasgow on business every couple of months, so I’ll usually pop by and
see one or two people. Are they my friends? I hope so. If a friend is
someone you like then they’re friends already, and time will make them
dearer I am sure.
It was a journey for me, one that takes me from Possilpark to where I am now,
on my yacht in St Tropez, and one I will never forget. The fact that it has
broken all records for its time slot, the numbers of people who watched it,
whether four million or one million, it’s nothing to do with me and
everything to do with Ronnie, Lynne, Andrew and the others who give up their
time day in and day out. It was their story that moved the audience, not
mine.
The people I met are diametrically opposed to everything I am. I’m one of
life’s lucky guys and in Glasgow I met some of life’s unluckiest. I’m
wealthy, they’re poor. I have all my faculties, many of them don’t. It made
me realise how much I have. More than that, I saw how generous people could
be with so little — very humbling.
Some people have expected me to say that Secret Millionaire was a
life-altering experience. They are waiting for me to give it all up to
become a missionary. But I don’t feel guilty about what I do as an
entrepreneur. The fact that I am capable of earning lots of money is not a
problem for me. Perhaps what has changed is how and where I’m going to give
it away, now that I see the difficulties we have on our own doorstep.
Where does the cycle start, between poverty and disability, loneliness,
violence, third generation unemployment, gang culture and social isolation?
How does that spiral of deprivation begin? It’s not that I don’t wish to
understand the issues, more that I understand enough to know that I’ve only
pricked the surface. It’s an important question and one that needs
answering, but by government, not by me.
It’s an embarrassment to Great Britain that people are falling through the net
quite as badly as they are. If we don’t shine a light on how people are
living in our country, it will never change. We can’t turn our faces away
and say, ‘I’m alright Jack’, but a thousand Nick Leslaus cannot fix these
problems. Sad to say, they’re a great deal bigger than can be solved by some
over-privileged guy with a chequebook.
As told to Helen Stewart
There is something slightly weird about people who treat their ailing pets like children
