Hard times make people hard... Life becomes about survival
In his new autobiography, billionaire Phones 4U founder John Caudwell opens up about growing up in poverty and being shamed by his father
JOHN CAUDWELL is one of the richest men in the UK, with multiple mansions to his name and a luxury yacht. But the Phones 4U founder’s life started in what was, back then, ‘grey, dark, cold and dirty’ Stoke-on-Trent.
He has opened up about his ‘street urchin’ childhood which saw him start smoking from the age of seven, going for joy rides on milk floats and sneaking into the cinema for free.
Sharing his childhood memories in his autobiography Love, Pain & Money: The Making of a Billionaire,
John explains what it was like living in poverty in a four-bed terrace house in the UK’s ‘filthiest city’ with his troubled dad Walter, mum Beryl, his gran on his dad’s side, Mary, and later his little brother, Brian.
Like most housing in the Potteries at the time, there were bare floorboards and no heating – though John admits from the outside his home looked ‘quite grand’ compared to his peers at school.
“Times were tough – for every working class family in the country, not just me and my family,” writes John, 70. “Hard times make people hard. Life becomes about survival, and there’s little room for niceties or special treatment in the daily grind of getting through each day and making ends meet.
“Our house set me apart from a lot of the other kids. Many of them lived in two up two down houses as sparse and run down as my own house. But I was aware from a very young age that we Caudwells were a little bit different.
“Our house itself could have been quite grand. From the outside it was a large, brick built, three-storey end-of-terrace. It was very definitely middle class territory and looked spacious and comfortable compared to the squashed-up little houses my friends went home to. But, on the inside, it was a different story. There was little comfort anywhere, from the hard-wooden floors to the tired, scuffed paintwork and dark rooms.
“When the atmosphere wasn’t tense with ongoing battles between the adults, an almost palpable feeling of disappointment hung in the air at that house.
“My external landscape provided the perfect backdrop to this grim household because I was born into the grit and smoke of the filthiest city in England, Stoke-on-Trent. I close my eyes and almost see my childhood in black and white.”
The book lays bare the difficult relationship he had with his father, a veteran of the Second World War who was troubled by his experiences during the conflict.
John describes how he used to worry about his family falling apart, and recalls the way his father would shame him for bed-wetting. I couldn’t sleep because I was scared. If I didn’t stay up listening to those horrible rows, something bad might happen,” he writes.
“Mum and Dad might split up; I might have to move away from Grandma. I’d be that boy in school who didn’t have a mum and a dad. I’d be out on the streets with my mum.
“And then, more shameful still, if I did go to sleep that other terrible thing might happen: I might wet the bed again, and wake up with
that horrible dampness on my sheets and pyjamas; the awful dark patch spreading across the mattress like the hot humiliation rushing through my body.
“‘Wee-wee,’ my dad called me. If he caught a glimpse of my mother with my sheets bundled up in her arms in the morning he’d shout.
“‘Not again, Weewee!’ Once I went with him to a car auction in Newcastle and a friend of his came over as Dad stood inspecting a potential bargain and I stood by his side feeling very grown up to be in this busy, fascinating place. ‘Who is this little lad, then Walter?’ called out his friend. ‘Oh, he’s called Weewee,’ Dad answered. I stood there red-faced and silent as two grownups laughed at my discomfort and shame.
“Why would this man I loved who I desperately wanted to love me back do that to me? I was mortified but I refused to allow any tears to fall from my eyes. I might wet the bed but I was never going to be called a cry-baby.”
It’s perhaps no surprise that John chose to spend as much time as possible away from home getting up to no good. With an entrepreneurial spirit from the outset he was always looking for ways to make money. It was that drive to improve that led him to set up multiple businesses before investing in mobile phones.
“I wasn’t going to be given hand-outs from my dad,” says John, who sold Phones4U for £1.46 billion in 2006. “I’d never dare ask him for sweets or a toy.
“By the age of four I was trading in old toys; mine and any I could buy or beg from my neighbours. A few
Wee-wee,’ my dad called me... I was mortified but I refused to allow any tears to fall from my eyes. John’s dad shamed him for bed-wetting
years later, I discovered a trick of asking for change for a three-penny bit – that rather quirky, attractive 12-sided nickel and brass threepence coin that existed before being wiped out by decimalisation in 1971.
“First, I had to find someone who wasn’t well known to my mum, my
dad or my grandma. Ideally, they’d be a man or woman on their own with a kind-looking face. ‘Can you change my thrupenny bit for three pennies, please?’ I’d ask very politely. They’d pull out change from their pockets, one or two pennies, and say, ‘Sorry, lad.’
“Quite often they’d give me a penny because I’d look so crushed. I’d spend my spoils on sweets and – believe it or not – cigarettes. At seven I was a regular smoker. I could buy a single cigarette from the newsagent (back then they didn’t really bat an eyelid if they were selling cigarettes to a kid who could barely see over the top of the counter), or I would buy cigarette papers and collect fag ends from outside pubs or shops and unwrap any remaining shreds of tobacco until I had enough to make a full cigarette. It makes me feel ill now to think I did that, but I was a fullblown street urchin.”
A young John’s mischievous ways would soon rub off on his little brother.
“My younger brother Brian, who was born when I was seven, remembers me initiating him into all sorts of dubious ways of entertaining ourselves for free,” he says. “We got up to all sorts of innocent mischief. Most tricky – but the most fun – was sneaking into the local cinema where I’d found a small entrance that led right to the back of the seats, and was hidden by a long, velvet curtain and unmanned by any sharp-eyed usherettes.”
Another way John entertained himself was trips to nearby Hanley Park.
“I was always up to some mischief, whether it was trouble at school, setting piles of wood on fire in Hanley Park, doing reckless dares to impress other kids, or jumping free rides on the electric milk carts that were left (with the keys still in the ignition) outside the creamery, a few doors from our house.
“Occasionally there was trouble when we got back home. ‘Your dad’s after you, John,’ my mum would tell me, as I walked through the door. ‘What’ve you done wrong now?’ I’d shrug and say nothing. What hadn’t I done wrong? I knew I was for it.”
Report by Hayley Parker
John Caudwell - Love, Pain & Money: The Making of a Billionaire, £18.99. Save £3 (RRP £18.99) with offer code RB5 on mirrorbooks.co.uk John is donating all proceeds to charity
Caudwell Children