GEORGE REYNOLDS: I’M ON MY WAY BACK
FORMER TYCOON’S BID TO REVIVE FORTUNES WITH E-CIG BUSINESS
GEORGE REYNOLDS has claimed he is on his way back up to the top with his e-cig business.
And after running a multimillionpound business empire, and a football club, the 81-year-old says he has no plans to slow down, proclaiming: “I’ll be working until the day I die.”
The former business tycoon still works from 8am to 11pm, six days a week.
Enigma, his e-cigarette shop in Chester-leStreet, County Durham, is a long way from the 25,000-seat Reynolds Arena, once home to Darlington FC, complete with gold taps and marble toilets. But the former safecracker has said he doesn’t miss the trappings of wealth that he used to surround himself with. The grandfather keeps mementos from his time as one of the wealthiest men in Britain to hand in his Chesterle-Street shop, along with brochures for the yacht he used to own and photos of his old helicopter. Showing off photos of him- self with Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey, he said: “I don’t miss it at all – I have a wonderful life now.
“I was the biggest kitchen worktops manufacturer in the world – I sold that business for £47m. I was on TV 410 times in one year and in glossy magazines all over the world.
“What am I doing now? I am just making money, making a living and I am quite happy with that – I am quite content. I am doing quite well I’d say, for a man of my age. I can’t complain.”
Three years ago, the former Darlington Football Club chairman decided to move into the e-cigarette business with a shop and factory in Durham.
He said: “I started this business to prove a point – anyone can make money if they’ve got common sense and if they know how. I’ve been working since I was a kid – since I was eight years old I have had a business brain.
“If you don’t keep active you just waste away. If you look at the older generation, we’re all still grafting. I am 81 years old and I run circles around these young ones when it comes to business.”
The former tycoon, whose business card proclaims he is “a maker of money and an utter genius”, said he spotted a gap in the market when the e-cigarette trend started to take off.
He said: “If you want to make money, always go for an addiction. Drugs are an addiction but I’ve never liked them – I am anti-drugs. I am not a drinker either – I have the occasional lager and lime. but that’s it. Gambling is an addiction and there’s money to be made there.
“Business is my addiction – I’m addicted to making money.”
And make money he did. Before his famous downfall, Reyn-
The yacht and helicopter George Reynolds used to own before he was hauled before the courts, left olds amassed a £260m fortune, ranking at 112 on The Sunday Times Richlist .
He famously bought Darlington Football Club in 1999 and built the team a new stadium costing £20m, and was the archetypal football club chairman, complete with cigar and sheepskin coat.
“Football is far too expensive nowadays, I wouldn’t touch it,” he said. “I still enjoy the matches. I go to Newcastle, I go to Middlesbrough and I enjoy them all, but I’m a Sunderland fan overall, that’s where I grew up.
“I had two happy days with Darlington Football Club, the day I bought the club and the day I sold it. £37m I spent there. It’s a beautiful stadium though, I hate seeing it like it is now.”
As well as the football club, Reynold’s three divorces cost him chunks of his fortune, but the bitter quarrels are all water under the bridge now.
He said: “There’s no animosity there now with any of them, no bad blood there at all. I’m a single man now – I’ve had three wives, but you’ve got to change them every 12 years like a
washer-dryer.” The lavish mansion Witton Hall he shared with his former wife Susan was sold in 2004 when he was jailed for three years for cheating the Inland Revenue out of £650,000 over four years.
But George says he is quite happy now in his flat. “It has lovely views of the river and the cathedral. You can see the prison from up there too, which puts things in perspective.” In his younger days, Reynold’s served time at HMP Durham, but it was HMP Wealstun where he served his time for tax evasion after he was arrested in 2004 with £500,000 of cash in his car.
“Prison wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I quite enjoyed it myself.”
The Labour-run Durham Council are currently in the entrepreneur’s cross hairs and, in the lead-up to the election, he paid for 60,000 antiLabour leaflets to be delivered in the region.
But, unlike his old pal Donald Trump, Reynolds says he has no plans for a political career.
“I’d rather be on the outside spitting in – politics is not for me. I met Donald Trump lots of times – he was getting his yacht made at the same time as mine so we met each other then. I think he is a great leader, and a downto-earth guy.
“He tells the truth and he has upset the apple cart.”