Programmed to fail

Life, for most of us, is a messy mixture of success, failure and downright ordinariness.

There is no special desire on my part to dwell on the middle bit of that list; it is just that when I think of my young days in the North East, the failures stand out rather more prominently than the humdrum, and much more so that success.

That introduction could have led into any one of several topics. Schooldays, despite what has already appeared at Salut! North, could be explored further. So could the process by which I came to realise I was unlikely, after all, to play for Sunderland. What about those feeble early attempts to attract girlfriends?

All in good time. For now, let me tell the sad rags-to-rags story of the North Eastern Programme Club.

Maybe these Scottish programmes would have sold
Picture: Lutrus

This was the project that was going to be my equivalent of the Richard Branson boyhood acquisition of business acumen. He grew Christmas trees and raised budgerigars; I would buy and sell football programmes. And I would rope in my great friend Pete Sixsmith to share in the meteoric rise to prosperity that I knew lay ahead.

It was all those advertisements in Charlie Buchan's Football Monthly that fired our imagination. Page after page of offers, good prices being demanded for back numbers of the programmes sold at most football matches in the land. Why, we thought, shouldn't we muscle in on the trade?

Somewhere in my basement in France is a file called Shildon or NE Programme Club in which can still be found the letterheads we had printed and copied. The "office" of this establishment was given as 7 Drybourne Avenue, Shildon - where I lived - and the names of Colin Randall and Pete Sixsmith appeared, at the foot of the page I believe, as proprietors.

Capital investment in the project, it should be admitted straight away, was on the low side. Our combined pocket money and paper round earnings were not quite sufficient to give us a sound financial footing. We were not to be deterred. We had vision, enthusiasm and a self-evidently hungry market to feed.

So off went the letters to Man Utd, Arsenal, Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Wolves and the rest. Dozens of them were posted to all the top clubs to ask what they would charge for unsold copies.

Replies, to be completely honest, were hardly encouraging. In fact, some clubs didn't bother to reply at all. Others would point out that they already had perfectly acceptable contracts with some of those brash outfits we'd seen in the Football Monthly. And a few came back with offers to sell, invariably requiring a commitment, in terms of the number of programmes they expected us to buy, that was simply beyond us.

Our sights dropped lower. Was it Dundee, or Dundee United or maybe even Aberdeen that finally came back with an affordable deal? My parents' garage, long since cleared of the one car to have occupied it, became the NE Programme Club warehouse, stocking hundreds and hundreds of virtually unmarketable Scottish programmes.

One or two other clubs - Preston North End and Chelsea stick out in the memory for some reason, too - also showed interest, and we were able to add to our wares.

How to sell them was the next poser. I think a second pal, Geoff Carnan, far too sensible to become involved more deeply, was persuaded to lend the cost of advertising in the magazine. I cannot remember what interest rate he settled on, but this was a minor concern as we sat back awaiting the avalanche of orders.

Pete and I had loads of programmes in our own collections, which were raided in order to make up "surprise packages" that were still, oddly enough, dominated by unfashionable North-east Scotland clubs.

The Football Monthly readership was slow to react. The orders did not flood in. They didn't even trickle. By the time our second advertisement had appeared, it was clear that our range of programmes had not exactly reached must-have levels of appeal.

Worse was to come, and this may well have been the fatal blow to our entrepreneurial spirit. Pete's mum found out what we were up to. With stern warnings about Colin's "bad influence" - I was, after all, the lad down the street who had been kicked out of grammar school - she wisely ordered her son to stage a boardroom defection.

And very soon, the North Eastern Programme Club was dead, leaving behind a mountain of unwanted programmes, piles of redundant letterheads, a short trail of disgruntled purchasers and a debt to poor old Geoff that was large enough to take me weeks, if not longer, to clear.

It was enough to show that I was probably not destined to become a captain of industry. But was I defeated too easily? If only I had known of young Branson's exploits down south; the Christmas trees and budgies, it seems, were hardly more successful than my football programmes.

Why didn't I persevere? I, too, might have gone on to run a chain of record stores and launch an airline. Pete's mum would have come round in time. But then again, in our hands, those businesses would also have collapsed, whether or not run from Drybourne Avenue.

Let's be realistic. There was not much of a market for the dodgy folk records we'd have tried to sell. As for the airline, we would never have latched on to the fact that the obvious way to make money is to make people fly with knees forced up into their chins by the closeness of the seats in front.

Comments

[Dumdad]

To think the world has had to do without Randall Air! Free Sunderland programme with every trip.....

[Pete Sixsmith]

The problem with being a business success is that you either end up as a boring squillionaire like Bob Murray or a complete t*** like Mike Ashley so my mothers view of our business enterprise probably saved both of us from a life of excess. Who wants a helicopter and a bath full of champagne?
We had a load of Watford programmes as well. They had a bright yellow cover and contained no pictures. We shipped a few out but the world was not ready then for bumper bundles of Watford, ES Clydebank and Aberdeen programmes. Don't suppose it ever will be.
Being Colin's business partner meant that I had to fiddle even more money from my Sunday paper round. Jimmy Wilson, the shop owner, could never understand why my collecting book failed to balance but he worried me once when he suggested that he would get his stepson to go over the book. His stepson was George Reynolds. I reckon Colin could write a few memories of him.
Now, after 35 years at the chalk face (now the Electronic Board face) I often wonder what would have happened if we had been able to challenge the titans of the football programme world like David Stacey and Steve Earl. I rarely buy one now and even gave my Sunderland ones away to a mate - who promptly (and with my blessing) made a few quid out of flogging them on e-bay.

[Bill Taylor]

Now tell us about those feeble attempts to attract girlfriends: "Wanna come back to my place and see my Partick Thistle collection?"

[Keith]

Colin has been a friend for many years. Unfortunately I never knew him when he was attempting to be a football programme entrepreneur. Had I done so, I would have been in a position to advise him that anyone prepared to part with his hard-earned to watch Sunderland play was probably not well qualified to judge what would and would not sell in the programme market.
PS I might have a few Chatham Town back numbers I can sell if you ever consider relaunching the venture

[Bill Taylor]

I have a couple of programs stashed away somewhere from the heyday of Aycliffe Stock Car Stadium. I'd willingly part with them to help Colin get back onto his entrepreneurial feet.

[Keith]

I think Bill is on to something there. We could form an organisation, perhaps called Friends of Colin, turn out our lofts and send him all the collectables we could find. I might even be able to lay my hands on some Kent League back numbers featuring giants of the game such as Sheppey United, Whitstable and Crockenhill. It would surely then be only a short step to the creation of Air Randall

[Dr. Jules]

"Hello, this is your captain Colin welcoming you aboard Randall Air. We hope you have a pleasant . . . oops, don't like the sound of that. Um, please fasten your seatbelts as I think we about to go down just like Sunderland FC....."

[Keith]

Hmm. Maybe Air Randall is not such a good idea. It's not that I don't wish Colin every entrepreneurial success. It's not even that I'm too worried he might turn out to be the pilot on my flight over the Bermuda Triangle. It's just that he comes from oop north and I fear that he might install outside lavatories on his air fleet

[Bill Taylor]

Given the boyhood elocution lessons that he's hinted at, not to mention (and I'm sure he'd rather I didn't) his origins in Hove, I expect Colin would be a very well-spoken captain: The plane in Spain flies mainly down the drain.... Speaking of which, instead of outside toilets -- and conventional seating -- perhaps Air Randall could feature rows of the two-holer netties that may well have been a prominent feature of his formative years.

[Keith]

Am I to believe after all these years that Colin is a faux Northerner? Hove? Surely that's not true. It's like finding out that Terry Wogan isn't Irish

[Colin Randall]

The skeleton in my cupboard is not only visible but rattles. The very first posting on this site told the story. Born in Hove,(was)moved to Shildon in the first few months of my life and stayed there until my early 20s.
Keith may be excused a spot of mirth at his belated discovery. As a Yeoman of Kent, he suffers merciless ragging for being one of Man Utd's more typical "supporters" (or brand followers as I like to call them). He has tried to make up for this gap in his quest for glory by visiting Manchester and other parts of the NW Midlands whenever he can get tickets.

[Keith]

Colin, I am indeed a Man of Kent (not a Kentish Man). For many years I thought the Earth was flat and that if one ventured past Watford, one would drop off the edge. Then came education and I discovered that there was a world beyond the M25, albeit a strange one. Having made the discovery and being a fan of fine football, going to Old Trafford was an obvious choice. After all, if you are going to spend vast sums of money on travel and tickets, why, why, why go to the Stadium of Blight? One might as well save the time and effort, make a neat pile of tenners and put a match to them.

[Keith]

PS. I have programmes for the 1985 FA Cup Final (United 1 Everton 0, Whiteside); United v Blackburn (final game of 92/93 title-winning season); United v Coventry (final game of 93/94 Double-winning season); United v Spurs (95/96 Double-winning season); and the 1996 FA Cup Final (United 1 Liverpool 0, Cantona). To name but a few. I think I might launch a programme business ... could be some money in it. What are the rates for classified ads in Charlie Buchan's Football Monthly these days?

[Keith]

PPS. An ignorant Southerner asks: Bill, what's a two-holer netty?

[Dumdad]

I'm a Kentish Man but I support Leeds United. At least I lived in Leeds for some of my formative years and the grit and grim and glory of the place has never left me. My dad was a Yorkshireman through and through so that also makes me half-Yorkshire.

Hove Man supports Sunderland;

Man of Kent supports Man Utd;

Kentish Man supports Leeds United.

Nought as queer as folk!

[Bill Taylor]

A two-holer netty was an ash or earth closet usually situated at the bottom of the garden for easy emptying by a night-soil collector. For convenience (no pun intended) or perhaps companionship, many had two (or even three) holes side by side. You were regarded as very posh (or, perhaps, very Hove) indeed if you had a one-holer.
It was an idea that crossed the Atlantic. The recent (and excellent) movie "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" has, of all things, a seduction scene in a two-holer. I doubt if they called it a netty, though.
Leeds need all the support they can get, including crutches all round. But Dumdad presents a reasonable perspective on the geographic idiosyncrasies of soccer fans. Colin, alas, while eschewing the usual "isms" -- racism, sexism, ageism etc. -- seems perilously close to inventing regionalism.

[keith]

Good grief and I thought things were tough having to tiptoe out in the freezing cold to the outside loo in the council house where I was raised. I now realised I was nowt but a Southern softie. Night soil collector? Now that's an interesting job to have on the CV.

[Bill Taylor]

I'm hoping Colin will see fit to tell us about the knacker's yard he tried to run from his back garden until his mother (as opposed to Pete's Sixsmith's mam) stepped in. He had two business cards; one from the Despatch and one that announced him as "dead horse and donkey buyer. Fallen stock removed promptly." I think it took him all his time to keep them straight and not hand out the wrong one to people he was hoping to write about.

[keith]

I look forward to that one too. Why am I not surprised that Randall Inc included an Abattoir Division? If he is considering a relaunch of that and the programme division he could do worse than combine operations at the Stadium of Light

[Bill Taylor]

He traded, if memory serves, as "Knocker the Knacker" Randall, "Knocker" being the nickname (as opposed to knackname) he won as a stripling by sorting out three tearaways at Shildon shows who had the temerity to poke fun at him as he lounged, trying to look cool, on the steps of the Waltzer.
But even without maternal intervention, the business was doomed to early failure. Colin's only vehicle was the clapped-out -- or knackered, if you'd rather -- Minivan that he wrote about here quite recently. With the best will in the world, there's a limit to the size of dead beast that could be stuffed in the back, especially after the onset of rigor mortis. There simply weren't enough calves, foals, lambs and piglets keeling over to make it financially viable.

[keith]

Who'd have thought that the folk-loving, mild-mannered reporter we know and love once had visions of being the Slaughterman of Shildon?

There once was a knacker named Randall
When vexed he would fly off the handle
He'd roam in his van
Kill cow, sheep or man
And turn Bambi into a candle

[Bill Taylor]

Excellent! Had our hero only had you as his publicist back then, the venture may well have succeeded. Still, Shildon's gain would have been Abu Dhabi's loss.