He chomped on the answer like a dog with its rubber toy
BILLIONAIRE Mike Ashley – Mike the miser? – rolled in with the gait of a nightclub bouncer. One of life’s geezers. But an honest geezer, please. Can’t say fairer than that, fellas. Round his thick neck was fastened a tie in the colours of Newcastle United, which he owns. He was accompanied by a woman who may have been Britt Ekland’s younger sister.
His coterie included a PR flunkey, Keith Bishop, whose receding hair was gelled and tweezered to impart youthfulness.
The business select committee had for ages wanted to question sportswear retailer Ashley about conditions at his Sports Direct warehouse near Mansfield. For weeks Mr Ashley told them to get stuffed. Never a wise move, that.
Finally he relented. Before his arrival, trade unionists claimed that Sports Direct staff lived in such terror, one woman had a baby in the loos (she was too scared to take the day off, possibly).
With its petty punishments, security checks and agency pay practices, it was a Victorian-style ‘workhouse’.
MPs were itching to go on the attack. But as soon as Mr Ashley started responding, aggression became pointless.
You could no more attack this unconventional jabberer than you could eat pea soup with a fork. One moment the buck stopped with him, then it was none of it was his fault. The company had outgrown him but he was the only one who could get these things done. He spoke of himself in the third person. He sighed and beat his breast. Alack, alas, woe is me.
Sluice gates at the back of his larynx must have opened because soon the words were gushing out. He became a cross between John Prescott and David Brent (of TV’s The Office), a sort of capitalist Bob Crow, waving his arms around, thumping the desk and making strange, feral noises as he sought to pluck elusive words from his brain.
Mr Ashley got on to the ‘bottleneck’ at the factory gates which prevented staff from leaving swiftly at the end of the working day. ‘Not acceptable!’ he roared. He had decided to ‘give people a free minute’. Or had he? Suddenly he was not sure. He chewed on this conundrum as a boxer dog will chomp on its rubber toy.
He invited the committee to visit the warehouse any time. They could travel there in his helicopter. Well, maybe not all of them at once. What about sexual bullying? ‘Sports Direct has to pull its socks up,’ yelled Mike, ‘simple as that fellas.’ Instantly, he feared that might sound sexist.
And so, looking at the committee’s frosty women, he hurriedly corrected the ‘fellas’ to ‘girls’. Oh no!
Words became confused (‘income’ for ‘outcome’) and whole syllables were eaten as he hurtled through his sentences. ‘I know I’m a noise box,’ he bawled. One sentence began with six ‘ifs’. ‘I’m here to talk and I’m going to!’ he declared. Retail was ‘an art form’. He could look after his workers better than any unions.
HOW do you benchmark employee engagement?’ asked an SNP woman, a right busybody. Mike’s eyes narrowed. He repeated the question, as though tasting garlic bread for the first time. Benchmarking engagement. Nah. Workers just threw surveys in the bin.
The PR man made a rare sortie. ‘Mike goes to the canteen three days a week to dine with staff,’ he purred. ‘Dine’, indeed! Mr Ashley’s matter-of-fact bombast and disarming acceptance of flaws rather threw the MPs. They had met a force of nature – a raw entrepreneur, all energy and zero restraint. An MP told him he was so forthright, he didn’t need a PR. Keith Bishop’s eyes drooped with sorrow.
Finally, Mr Ashley was asked if he had wanted to buy BHS off Sir Philip Green (that other titan of capitalist honesty whom the committee will quiz next week). PR man Bishop snapped ‘no comment’. Mr Ashley barged past him. ‘One hundred per cent, I wanted to buy BHS,’ he said. PR man: ‘Oh my Gawd.’