Why ‘giving it a go’ may be best thing you’ve ever done
As Middle England’s most dangerous crime hotspot returns to our screens, top sleuth Neil Dudgeon on why, after 10 years, it’s still his dream job
YOUNGER people have been hit hardest economically by the Covid pandemic, enduring the brunt of lay-offs and redundancies. Some have even gone through the ordeal of having lost a job thanks to one lockdown, only to battle through and find another and then lose that one too in a subsequent lockdown.
To them the remarkable rise of Adam Frisby – who left school aged 16 with no qualifications and after bouncing between various low-paid jobs set up his own online fashion company – offers no cast-iron guarantee of success. But what it does offer is hope and another possible way forward.
Adam, now 33, used a £1,000 redundancy cheque to start his company eight years ago on a tiny scale in his own bedroom after spotting a gap in the fashion market for celebrity-influenced womenswear.
He began by buying six dresses from a wholesaler and selling them on for a healthy profit that he reinvested in new stock. His “In The Style” brand grew into an online phenomenon and is now valued at £105million. Given that he still owns a third of it outright after giving up a majority stake in return for new investment, that makes him worth £35million.
“I didn’t have a business model and had done no planning,” he disarmingly admits. His advice to the many young people who “feel lost” – as he did – when they emerge from school is to follow their dreams.
THAT A LAD hailing from Great Yarmouth, one of those coastal towns that is often described as “left behind”, can catapult to huge success in such a relatively short time despite lacking any exam certificates in anything at all tells us something important about the potential of the online economy.
For a start, it is a vastly more democratic way of trading than previous economic structures and hierarchies that depended to a great extent on having influential connections or lots of money, or at least solid academic qualifications behind you.
In the digital age, nimble new companies that understand their markets can grow at an astonishing rate, while established titans wither.
Another online phenomenon, Boohoo, has bought the oncemighty Debenhams for £55million – little more than half the current value of the company Adam started in 2013.
Many teenagers and twentysomethings are fluent with IT and on social media, possessing an ability to post videos, set up accounts, despatch and track items through the post and via couriers from a smartphone as if it were all second nature.
Being as successful as Adam has been – or even just making a good living from something – requires a lot more than that, of course. Knowledge of an emerging market seems to be key – Adam used his appreciation of the way women were influenced by the clothes worn on fly-on-the-wall shows such as TOWIE to give his customers what he knew they wanted.
Self-discipline, hard work and attention to detail are undoubtedly all essential qualities too. But for lots of people those come far more naturally when working for themselves and their own bottom line rather than for large companies.
Not everyone has it in them to be an Adam Frisby. Some that do will miss out for reasons of plain bad luck, while others lack the resilience, the dynamism or just the great idea.
But amid a new round of redundancies and concerns about the quality of employment available to young people in many areas of the country, the coming to light of his story
is timely indeed. There must be huge numbers who are not on any professional conveyor belt, who do not know what line of work to pursue and yet are in possession of bankable knowledge about new trends in consumerism and lifestyles about which executives in big companies are blindsided.
In Only Fools and Horses, Del Boy used to tell Rodney “this time next year we’ll be millionaires” and we’d laugh along at the pathos of it, knowing how unlikely such an outcome to be.
IT is still not the most likely outcome for new waves of self-employed and entrepreneurs. But it is not a pipe dream either. In many instances, a hard-headed assessment about the best way forward in any choice between a dead-end job on a zero hours contract or starting up on your own points to the latter course.
If lots of the young people who feel all at sea as they approach the post-Covid economy decide to set up on their own there is little doubt that the overall outcome will be more growth and more jobs for all than if they decide to play it safe.AsAdam puts it: “I thought I would give it a go.”
‘Nimble new companies can grow while established titans wither’
ICAN only imagine Prince William’s fury when he was asked by a TV reporter if his family is racist: “We are very much NOT a racist family,” he hit back. I wish he’d said more. I wish he’d said: “How dare my deluded brother and his wife do this to us? How dare they trash my wonderful, hard-working wife who day after day slogs her guts out for this family yet who, in front of 50 million viewers, has been branded the one who made Meghan cry?”
Of course that was never going to happen. But just look at those pictures of Kate as her husband sprang to the defence of his family. She was walking alongside the black co-head of a multi-race school she and Wills were visiting and she looked like she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her.
She was mortified but, eyes fixed firmly on the ground, she knew she had no choice but to endure this humiliation courtesy of her sister-inlaw – how spiteful! Imagine Kate’s hurt. Imagine the embarrassment for this shy, reserved, unshowy woman who isn’t able to publicly defend herself against Meghan’s attack on her character and her reputation which has taken years of hard graft to build.
How bloody humiliating for her that everything she’s ever done has culminated in her being trashed on the word of one woman. It wasn’t enough for Meghan that Kate and Will’s relationship with Harry has been destroyed. She had to make it personal and attack a wife and mum whose graciousness, compassion and work ethic she can never hope to emulate. Unlike Meghan, Kate doesn’t just “talk” compassion and caring. She lives it.
Despite having had three kids and three incredibly difficult pregnancies Kate has been the single biggest modernising influence on the royals. Meghan might dream of being Diana but Kate is actually the living, breathing embodiment of her – but without the hassle.
Her work load is relentless and her dedication to the charities and the people she supports goes above and beyond.
And she works as hard as she does – not just for those causes and charities but out of respect for the Queen and the monarchy. She knows she andWills are its future and she takes that responsibility very seriously. Yet, thanks to Meghan’s accusations, all the world is talking about is that she made Meghan cry. I know the rule now is that we can’t question or criticise anything Meghan says because it’s racist but I’ll say it anyway: I don’t believe Kate made Meghan cry. I still believe it was the other way round.
AND what was interesting during that car crash interview is that Meghan talked about her suicidal thoughts while pregnant with Archie. In 2019 she told ITV journalist Tom Bradby that any woman when pregnant is vulnerable so the amount of attention directed at her made it “really challenging”. She also talked about the challenges of having a newborn baby.
So for a woman so protective of her own mental health after giving birth it’s a great pity she failed to tell Oprah that the bridesmaid spat happened weeks after Kate had given birth to Louis. While Meghan expected help and understanding from the Palace in HER postnatal state, she afforded her sister-in-law Kate no such luxury. There are those who insist that yes, Kate WAS in tears after that row, and not Meghan.
In the early days I didn’t have much time for “Waity Katie”. She never held down a full-time job and hung around for eight years waiting for Wills to make up his mind. But now I have huge respect and admiration for the Duchess of Cambridge who’s never put a foot wrong.
Forget the fact she’s beautiful and can light up a room with that megawatt smile. She’s also kind, caring, has the heart of a lion, and she’s a fantastic mum. Like Diana there’s a serenity, a goodness about her. Like Diana she gives of herself. Like Diana she (and Wills) have brought the monarchy into the 21st century. And she WILL be a fantastic Queen.
Meghan could have learned much from Kate. Instead she has hurt this decent, honourable woman who has done nothing to deserve the worldwide trashing she’s currently getting, courtesy of her publicity hungry sister-in-law.
THERE is a moment in the upcoming series of Midsomer Murders when DCI John Barnaby, played by Neil Dudgeon, contemplates retiring from the county constabulary. But nobody should choke on their cocoa just yet. Neil, who’s celebrating 10 years in the role, has no intention of handing back the badge he earned in 2011 when his predecessor John Nettles quit.
“It’s a very, very long time to be in a show,” concedes the affable actor over a Zoom call. “I never had any idea it would go on this long.
“They said, ‘You can come in and do a few episodes of Midsomer,’ and I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try; I hope I don’t destroy the show inside one episode, because that would be very embarrassing after John Nettles had done so marvellously for 13 years’.”
But it’s all gone rather well. The genial Barnaby patrols the leafy lanes of Midsomer cracking convoluted cases with relative ease while his current sidekick, DS Jamie Winter played by Nick Hendrix, runs after perpetrators when necessary.
“If I were thinking about retiring from acting, I would do some other things, but if I want to carry on acting, I can’t really think of a show I’d rather do than Midsomer Murders,” muses Neil.
“It’s sort of my home now for six or seven months of the year. I spend more time there than I do in my actual home and the crew are kind of family and you’ve got these beautiful places to film in, with all the wonderful guests that come along.”
Screened in more than 220 territories worldwide, Midsomer Murders remains one of ITV’s greatest hits. Its USP is the paradox of setting gruesome murders in England’s prettiest corners, often Oxfordshire and The Chilterns, where longstanding grievances fester quietly under the veneer of genteel village life until they erupt into violence.
The considerable body count rises again in this series when tensions explode over a beekeeping enterprise at a historic home; during an angling competition; at a glamping site and at a social club for recovering heart-bypass patients.
Quite simply, it couldn’t be more Middle England.
The deaths are often marvellously baroque in nature – in this series, a victim is stabbed by a bamboo stick used in the Japanese martial art Kendo, while another meets his maker after being swarmed over by bees.
NEIL finds himself constantly tickled by the inventiveness of the writers. “Some of the deaths have been marvellous,” he snorts. “Martine McCutcheon killed by cheese [in 2013’s Schooled in Murder], of course, and the guy who was covered in truffle oil and eaten alive by a wild boar [in 2014’s Wild Harvest] were very inventive.
“I thought we had lost the plot with the 2016 episode about UFOs crashing in the woods [The Incident at Cooper Hill], but the writing was so brilliant it all made sense and we had Alison Steadman in that episode.”
Alongside high production values that make rural England look dappled in perpetual summer sunlight, famous guest stars have always showered stardust on
Midsomer: Olivia Colman, Edward Claire Bloom, Orlando Bloom and dozens of others have appeared.
This series’ guest stars include Griff Rhys Jones as a landed beekeeper and Cold Feet’s John Thomson as a heart op patient.
Neil, whose on-screen wife Sarah is played by Scottish actress Fiona Dolman, admits to being frequently starstruck.
“My first two episodes of Midsomer were with David Warner and Edward Fox,” he
Fox,
says. “I couldn’t believe I was working with my acting heroes. As for this series, I must mention Derek Griffiths. He was a hero of my childhood from PlaySchool [1971-81] and Play Away [1971]. “Half a century later, I’m working with him in Midsomer Murders, going, ‘It’s Derek Griffiths!’ It’s an unbelievable parade of great people.”
Neil was once part of that parade, starring in an early episode of Midsomer – he played a randy gardener in 2000’s The Garden of Death. “I still get messages via Twitter of, ‘Oh
I just saw that Neil Dudgeon being a saucy gardener in an episode from years ago,” he chuckles. “My character was actually trying to seduce Joyce Barnaby [Jane Wymark], which is getting a bit weird.” It’s strange in that in his later incarnation as John Barnaby, Joyce was his cousin’s wife.
Although two of the upcoming episodes were filmed pre-pandemic, two were filmed from October 2020 under strict Covid guidelines. Neil admits he found social distancing on set difficult.
“More than anybody I think I’ve struggled with that, because Midsomer is a physically affectionate set,” he muses. “There’s lots of hand-shaking, hugging and kissing in the mornings.
“On the first day when I first arrived back and we started shooting on a glamping site, it was all very Midsomer except everyone was distant and wearing masks and I thought, ‘This is really weird, really strange and a bit unnerving.’
“But within about 15 minutes I was quizzing [guest stars] MarkWilliams and Siobhan
‘Some of the deaths are marvellous. Martine McCutcheon was killed by cheese’