The STRIFE of Bryan
Jackson’s role as the leading man in saving several clubs from liquidation has led him to become a playwright...
ONCE more, with feeling. Bryan Jackson has helped seven football clubs to survive. It was always business, it was always personal. ‘I am quite a romantic, quite a sensitive soul,’ says the expert in insolvency who has spent a lifetime finding meaning in figures. ‘When I turned off Gorgie Road the other day and saw that new stand, I had tears in my eyes.
‘I felt emotional because of all the effort that had been put in to save Hearts. The stand has nothing to do with me. I am amazed at the timescale it was built in and I give huge credit to Ann (Budge) and the Foundation of Hearts. You would have been lucky to have an extension to your house built in that time.’
The financial saviour of several clubs, including Hearts, this eternal student of figures has become a man of letters. Jackson, now 61, has written a play, The Pieman Cometh, a dark comedy on Scottish football. It is more grin rather than grim reaper.
‘The idea came from a moment at one of the clubs I was at that was in big trouble,’ he explains. ‘One of my colleagues said to me: “I need to talk to you about the pies”. I said: “Look, there might not be a club here in 24 hours. There may be other things to concern us”.’
It was hand-to-mouth, and not in a pie-eating way, but it was typical of the small issues that come up when the big issue of club survival is addressed.
He recalls: ‘An idea must have formed in my subconscious because, weeks later, the same colleague said to me: “The pie situation has come to a head”. I immediately thought that was a great title for a play and it was the title for the draft.’
This was written on a beach holiday. Jackson’s daughter, Kara, is a stage manager and the immersion in theatre had an effect on her father. The play has now been through several drafts, involving collaborator David Belcher and director Frank Miller, and will be performed from March 18-21 at Oran Mor, Glasgow.
Unsurprisingly for a canny businessman, Jackson has even attracted a sponsor for his play in chartered accountants, Gerber Landa & Gee.
If Scottish football has been described as comedy, farce and tragedy, Jackson has sought to reflect all of that while spreading the message that administration — he has never taken a club into liquidation — has serious consequences.
‘I have tried to make the play entertaining and the characters are exaggerated, but there are consequences for financial failure. People lose money. Workers lose their jobs. Creditors, often small businesses, do not get all of their money. It is a comedy, but a dark one,’ he says.
Jackson wears a multi-coloured scarf when it comes to football. He retains an affection for Morton, where his grandfather took him as a child. He supports Celtic after he went to matches when a pal signed on S-forms for the club.
‘I also follow the results of all the clubs I have worked in,’ he says. He must spend most of Sunday in front of the results page of his newspaper.
Jackson, now working as a consultant at Johnston Carmichael in Glasgow, has been involved in unravelling the financial mayhem at Clydebank, Motherwell, Clyde, Dundee, Dunfermline, Portsmouth and Hearts.
The most difficult job was at Hearts, which may have helped provoke the tears when turning off Gorgie Road recently.
‘There was big support there, but there were big obstacles, too,’ he explains. ‘Every time we got over one, a new one came up. My head was going down a bit. Most problems centred on the fact that we were largely dealing with Lithuania, which has a different culture and different legislation.’
The mess created by Vladimir Romanov was ultimately cleared, but the outside world remains baffled by how many businessmen seem to abandon all sense of rationality on first contact with ownership of a club.
‘I think they become insane,’ adds Jackson. ‘Some would say they were insane just to buy a club. They make emotional decisions and they lose a sense of reality. Not always, but often.
‘People who come in are usually successful and they have an idea that things will come out all right. But football is totally different. Things that work in the normal world do not work in football. Things can go wrong in a moment.’
He speaks of the stress of watching a club he was trying to save play a semi-final.
‘I knew that, if they won and reached the final, that would close the funding gap,’ he adds. ‘They lost. There is nothing I can do about that. That is the nightmare of doing football jobs — there are
The situation with the pies came to a head. I had an idea...
Scottish football has an insanity which infects all of us
too many things outside your control.’
He has a simple rule when appraising the financial health of a club: ‘If the money is not generated by the club, it is not sustainable,’ he says. He points out there is an obvious danger in the model where an owner pours in money.
‘Circumstances change, people move on, the money can run out,’ he adds.
This seems like an ideal point to bring up Rangers, liquidation and soft loans. But, however romantic Jackson professes to be, he is a professional. He will not comment on other businesses or other administrators.
He prefers to reflect on the clubs he helped rescue and why and how he did it. The ‘how’ reflects the truism of ‘pound in, pound out’ where costs are tightly regulated, pies and all. The ‘why’ is both intriguing and revealing.
‘There is an insanity in Scottish football that infects all of us,’ he says. The hours working with a beleaguered club were always long, but he maintains they were fulfilling, too. He points out that many fans who came to boo him as the grim reaper gradually began to see that he was trying to salvage the business rather than kill it.
‘I did it all because it was satisfying,’ he explains.
‘I know how important a club is because I am a supporter. Football is an addiction. And I am probably addicted. I know what it means to the supporters because I know what it means to me.’
It has, however, its ‘nightmares’. Jackson says: ‘I always hated making someone redundant. I never got used to that and that is in the play because the reality is that people are affected and sometimes badly affected. I knew it had to be done but that does not make it any easier.’
The profile of football continues to fascinate him. ‘I was involved in making 366 miners redundant in Kincardine,’ says Jackson.
‘This was a mining community, miners through generations. A desperate day. But it got about two lines in the papers. When I was working with Clydebank, it had about 200-300 supporters yet there was huge attention from TV, radio, and newspaper reporters.’
He believes Scottish football has ‘sobered up’ in financial terms.
‘Clubs have budgeted better and now live within their means. Clubs are trying hard to find a balance and are doing so. The crazy days appear to be over, hopefully,’ he says.
Did he ever feel the urge to join the panto of Scottish football in an executive role?
‘Over the years, I have had a few offers. Although my heart always said yes, my head — and my wife — always said no. To be honest, I don’t think I am thick-skinned enough,’ he says.
‘It is a fascinating sport and business and I am attracted to it, but I think I prefer just to visit.’
Instead, he opted to be the rescuer, with great success. Now he is the chronicler of the mayhem of Scottish football.
‘I have tried to incorporate into the play all the types of characters you come across, though they are all fictitious,’ he insists.
There is drama and there is humour but his experience of the business ensures The Pieman
Cometh will be the real deal. Flawless record: Jackson has faced many difficulties but has never allowed a club to be liquidated on his watch