How did this flicky-haired bluffer cause such misery?
WITH his bouffant fringe, his suntan, silver wedding ring and chubbily public-school vowels, Dominic Chappell could be a timeshare Hooray on the Algarve. Perhaps that is what he should have been. It might have saved him the misery in which he and his 11,000 former employees now stew.
Mr Chappell arrived early for his parliamentary evidence session yesterday. The business select committee, which was about to interrogate him on his disastrous ownership of the BHS retail chain, was taking a comfort break. Sometime racing-driver Chappell, 49, wandered into the room where only a few of us had remained. He quietly took his seat, opened a hard-back A4 notebook and studied its pages. How could such chaos have been caused by someone so outwardly composed?
His looks? Ageing yacht marina smoothie, the sort who falls behind with his monthly payments on the BMW rag-top; not a fellow you would necessarily want your daughter to wed but probably an amiable enough companion for a San Miguel or two by the pool. In any film he might possibly be played by Hugh Bonneville.
The committee had just heard from former BHS executives and advisers, many of whom sucked fat fees from BHS.
Throughout yesterday’s long hearing we heard much about ‘fees’. As the day played out, the more one saw that ‘big business’ is rackety, run on the rim, often teetering. The bankers and lawyers are there to give it a veneer of order but they always make sure their fees are paid.
Is it any wonder voters feel the establishment is crocked? Is it any wonder Brexit looks so appealing as a change from this stinking status quo?
One of the former BHS executives had called Mr Chappell ‘a mythomaniac’, a ‘Premier League liar’. We even heard the rococo claim from a rather damp little fellow, name of Topp, that he feared Mr Chappell was going to kill him after he questioned the way £1.5million was temporarily hoovered out of BHS. How had Mr Chappell first been drawn to the BHS sale? It all started, apparently, when he bumped into a ‘grade A scumbag’ called Paul Sutton who had lived in a ‘very nice house in Mayfair’, complete with a Rolls-Royce. ‘He seemed a very credible guy,’ said Mr Chappell. The old Rollerin-the-drive ruse! This Sutton later fell from Mr Chappell’s esteem after failing to pay him for a small fortune in advisers’ fees incurred on ‘Project Albion’, the first bid to buy BHS.
ALTHOugH Mr Sutton disappeared, Mr Chappell’s ambition had been hooked. This small-time property speculator looked at BHS’s buildings and boggled. Pound-signs-in-the-eyes time. While being asked questions, he repeatedly uttered ‘yes’ – little coughs of affirmation.
He kept flicking a hand at his coiffed hair – a shudder of the head to correct an errant strand. It was the sort of gesture comic actors make when they want to portray ludicrous vanity. And he rubbed his eye. Now this may have been down to an eye problem he mentioned but in my experience, habitual eye-rubbers seldom tell the full truth.
For much of the mammoth session he was surprisingly composed – a competent bluffer, if bluffer he be. But he lost his temper when asked about a £1million loan one of his companies made to secure his father’s home. He crossly said that was a ‘sideshow’.
Labour’s Frank Field: ‘Are you going bankrupt again?’ Mr Chappell laughed, ‘No I’m not’. But there had been a tiny, sick smile before he said that.
To him, the main scandal was the behaviour of former BHS owner Sir Philip green, depicted as a nasty meddler. He had ‘tipped BHS over the edge’ – not least when Mr Chappell proposed selling the business to Sir Philip’s rival, Mike Ashley. At that point Sir Philip had gone nuts and exploded. BHS was doomed.
Our fringe-flicking, small-fry timeshare guy had found himself caught between two of our country’s most feral billionaires. He had been crushed. Inevitable, I fear.