Sir Philip stared at me in fury – he had the eyes of an angry bull
DON’T you look at me in that tone of voice! For almost six hours – six hours of nasal niggle – Sir Philip Green was questioned about the collapse of BHS and its pension fund. Thousands of workers have been affected.
Parliament had a proper interest, not just on those workers’ behalf but also regarding corporate governance and (old idea) business ethics. Sir Philip glared at the MPs, screwing his tanned face into a walnut shell of disdain. Not accustomed to scrutiny, perhaps. Not used to having his omnipotence queried.
His gaze kept drifting leftwards and finally he could bear the distraction no more. Glowering at Tory MP Richard Fuller, he snapped: ‘D’you mind not looking at me like that all the time? It’s really disturbing!’
Mr Fuller (Bedford) had done nothing wrong. Parliamentary witnesses, especially in scandals, deserve examination. Only by peering at them up close may you be able to gauge their characters.
Here, in this bloated, truculent billionaire, hands caramel from the sundeck of his superyacht, sat the caricature of a capitalist system which, as Mr Fuller remarked, allows tycoons great freedoms. They can write off costs and losses to the public purse. They can shovel funds offshore. If their taste runs to such things, they can float on the Piz Buin-slicked waters of Monte Carlo harbour with their supermodel friends.
Yet Sir Philip was outraged by the polite questions these elected legislators put to him about his sale of BHS and the puzzling slump of the firm’s pensions fund.
He claimed he was being ‘beaten up’ and ‘bullied’ – by the smallest MP in the room, Gloucester’s cerebral Richard Graham. Sir Philip quibbled and spat out surly ‘sorrys?’ when asked inconvenient questions, his eyes darting side to side. He looked away from MPs who were asking him questions. ‘Sorry, am I in a different room?’ he asked sarcastically when he wished to suggest that he had already adequately answered a particular point. Sir Philip entered the room at 9.15am, a short, wary figure, stocky with long, grey curls cascading down his collar. The beginnings of a goatee were sprouting on his chin and he had a moustache of sorts. Almost his first words? ‘I don’t tell lies.’ He repeated this many times. He also said he did not want to blame anyone for the BHS collapse. ‘It’s not my style,’ he said, quite the magnanimous bigshot.
YET he was soon throwing sly disparagements at the woman who ran the BHS pension fund, at his rivals’ bankers, their lawyers and at journalists who had written impertinent things about him. They had been ‘rude’. That made me laugh. Sir Philip stared at me in fury. The eyes of an angry bull.
He said he was a self-made man who ‘walked the street’ as a youth in the rag trade. The voice was geezerish, not quite wheedly but not resonant. Odd to think that he attended a public school. He kept saying ‘right?’ and ‘okay?’ after assertions. Making his points, he nodded at his interlocutors, as if hammering in a tack.
Other verbal tics included ‘with respect’ and ‘without wanting to be rude’. Actually, it was clear he did intend to be rude, possibly to throw the MPs off their stride.
Jeremy Quin (Con, Horsham), like Mr Graham, showed admirable persistence chasing figures. ‘Put your glasses back on, you look better like that,’ said Green. Mr Quin asked about a £53million property deal involving a Green family fund. ‘I don’t like the way you’re asking the question,’ squealed Sir Philip.
Iain Wright (Lab, Hartlepool) noted that for a man supposedly so big and butch, he seemed terribly thin-skinned. Sir Philip naturally took issue with this, too.
Is it not often the way with men who like to throw around their weight? The moment someone brushes their arm, they drop to the ground, wailing that they have been wronged.
The meeting ended at 3pm. I felt an overwhelming desire to go and shower.