C But you did marry soon after that airborne meeting.
T We did.
C ...and you became a Muslim.
T Indeed. It’s a requirement.
C ..and has your adherence to the faith become more than a requirement, as you put it?
T It should be fairly obvious, Christine, from my name, that it has indeed gone far beyond that. My name is Haji Salleh, an indication that I have completed a pilgrimage to Mecca
C ...but, if I may... In the time I have been here with you on your island to make these programmes, I don’t recall seeing you offer prayers...
T I can pray wherever I want, Christine. There are prescribed times, but everything is flexible if you are on the move - as I am - or there are demands on your time. You might be staying with me on the island at the moment to record these interviews, but you don’t know everything that I get up to through each twenty-four hours, do you?
[TC turns to face CG. There is little expression, but his question is obvious. CG does not respond, and maintains a statuesque pose.]
T And you may have noticed that I was away from here yesterday - all day, in fact. That was because I had gone over there... [TC gesticulates directly ahead, beyond where CG sits facing him] ...to the mosque. I went early to go to the market as well, and then attended Friday prayers. I spent the afternoon after the mosque - as I usually do when I am working here on the island - talking to friends and acquaintances around town.
C I have to be honest with the listeners...
T [interrupting] Are you suggesting you usually are not?
C [laughs] It’s a form of words... No, I have to admit that yesterday I had no idea you had gone to the mosque. Frankly, I had no idea it was Friday. That means today should be Saturday...
T [laughs] I come here for peace and quiet so I can concentrate. The place really does seem to impart a calming effect, and it seems to be working on you as well, since you have only been here five days and already you don’t seem to know what day it is.
C [joking, in the facetious spirit of the last comment] Funny, it doesn’t feel like the weekend...
T That’s because it isn’t. Saturday is a normal working day around here. That’s why this interview is being disrupted by the sound of all these working boats.
[TC gestures to a point beyond the camera]
[wide angle continuity shot of open sea, land in the distance, several small craft with outboards travelling quickly across the view in all directions]
C I want to get back to your professional life, if I may, of course referring to the time before you became the world’s richest man.
T [interrupting] It’s a stupid label. You make it sound like I am sitting on piles of money.
C Put simply, Haji Salleh, you are. According to the most recent estimates I could obtain, you own significant stakes in just about every one of the FTSE 100 companies. You have similar stakes in each of the Dow 30, though currently I understand there are no up to date figures on this, you have significant stakes in scores of NASDAQ listings and you own between two and five per cent of literally hundreds of companies on other exchanges, as wide-ranging as France, Germany, India, China and Japan.
T [interrupting] I am pretty big in South America, Eastern Europe and Africa, for that matter, as well.
C Precisely. But I was trying to summarise, not list. We could include bonds, currencies, your presence in smaller markets, such as in the Middle East... Current estimates suggest you are worth at least a hundred billion dollars.
T [nods]
C So you agree with the figure I have just quoted?
T No. But carry on anyway.
C [pauses to look directly at TC] Well... do you have any comment?
T Anything you say, Christine.
C So you are sitting on piles of money. But you certainly don’t spend it, do you? Who does?
T As far as I am aware, no-one.
C Then what’s it all for? What is it that motivates you to make even more money, to amass even more wealth, as you seem to be doing every minute of every day, weekends included?
T Simply to see if it can be done. It’s all part of my work, my bigger project, if you like.
C This is the research you claim to have been doing for over thirty years?
T [impatiently] Christine, why do you say ‘claim’?
C Because you have never published any of this ‘work’... The only things you have published are a couple of papers on pedagogy, probably written because you needed a pretext to attend a conference here or there, in some desirable destination or other. [fumbles with her clipboard notes] I will quote: “An analysis of student interaction with computer-based simulation of simple differential equation scenarios” was one paper you presented at a Bangkok conference. And I think there was a similar one you submitted to get yourself on the freebie to Rio de Janeiro, as well.
T It was a serious piece of work. It was good enough to be published...
C ...but only in the conference papers, Tom.... Haji Salleh!
T ...just like all the other papers that were accepted...
[CG interrupts while turning the papers back on the clipboard to find a page near the bottom of the pile, CG holds up her hand to indicate that TC should pause]
C Let me quote for a moment... “Tom Cartwright’s research project is just a cover for a few days off every week, days off when he takes his boat out, walks in the jungle and frequents girly bars over the water[2]”. This was a quote from an interview I conducted just a few weeks ago with a former colleague of yours at the university. He also claimed that you were granted privileged status at work and you were allowed to do pretty much as you wished by virtue of your family connections by marriage.
T Source of the quote?
C I don’t reveal sources, Tom. I’m a journalist.
T Then it’s idle gossip and should be dismissed, like all tittle-tattle that can’t be ascribed to a source. I could make any allegation I liked, against any pet hate of my own, if I knew it would never be attributed to me. [pauses, then speaks ponderously] I think I might know the gentleman...
C He did work with you...
T ...and was sacked, had his contract terminated. If I remember correctly, and I’m sure I do, he used to teach - English, if I am not mistaken - using his own laptop, the same one he used to prepare his material at home. He left it plugged in and inactive for a significant time during a lesson while he was circulating through the room to look at the students’ work, and the machine reverted to his screen saver, which happened to be a scantily-clad woman and whose uncovered self suddenly covered half the end wall via the projector. There were several complaints from both students and staff. He wasn’t liked... He was out the next day.
C The opinion about your status and your research was not expressed by only one person. I had several reports...
T ...similarly unattributed... Just how many people contributed their opinions in your research?
C It’s not my job to define the probable, but merely to identify what is questionable. And I don’t want to go down the avenue of counting... What would you say to those who claim, however many there might be, that you had privileged status?
T They were probably right. After all, I was married to Noraya, and they weren’t.
C ... and the accusation that your research was bogus... did not exist?
T [pauses] So exactly who is this ‘richest man in the world’ you have come to interview? Is it me? Or is it one of those sources that you have, those who dismiss my work?
C ... and your wealth indicates the validity of your work?
T ...proof of the pudding...
[five second pause, CG and TC stare at one another, there is an air of confrontation]
C So having dismissed accusations that you exploited
privileged status at work, and equally rubbished opinions that your research was bogus, how would you respond to those who maintain that your current wealth arises from your being a front for the activities of other, already capital-rich interests, who want to conceal their ownership of global assets?
T Similarly.
C ...and that’s the sum of it... total dismissal?
[TC nods, CG pauses for three seconds, then adjusts her position, moves her left leg slightly to her left and turns the page on her clipboard]
C Let’s change tack now, and talk a little of your origins. You came from a Yorkshire mining village.
T I did, the same one as yourself, Christine, if I remember correctly.
C [directly to camera] Viewers may not be aware of the fact that Haji Salleh and myself share origins in that we were both brought up in Cottlestone and attended secondary school in the nearby town[3].
T Though different schools.
[CG smiles]
C Of course. Your father was a businessman?
T [laughs out loud for three seconds] Trevor Cartwright, a businessman? Well, he handled money, I can’t deny that. He was a coal merchant.
C He had his own lorry by the early 1950s and was followed into an expanded business by two sons, your older brothers. Is that accurate?
T It is. But he wasn’t a businessman in the sense that people nowadays would understand the term. Yes, he was in business, but it would be more accurate to say that he was self-employed. The word ‘businessman’ carries with it an idea of someone who hunts around for opportunities and then tries to exploit whatever his sense says might work. Trevor Cartwright was a trader, and no more. He dealt only in the common currency of the place where we grew up, which was coal. In ideological terms, if you want such a label, he was merely a merchant. Businessmen are capitalists. Merchants can go out of business. Capitalists move on.
C And you were not tempted to follow your brothers into the family business?
T Absolutely not. I never entertained the idea. It wasn’t for me.
C [pauses and gesticulates, waving the pen in her right hand] Why?
T Well it seems that I was different from them. Their ambition was to do exactly what they did, and nothing else. That was fine for them, but I proved to be more, let’s say, ‘academic’.
C But you were very ill as a child...
T Indeed I was. I had meningitis.
C ...and cancer...
T Of course, but that was much later. I don’t remember, of course, but I was told that that the meningitis was serious enough for my mother, and others, to be convinced that I wouldn’t survive.
C But you started school at the normal age.
T Normal... Now there’s a word... [this is issued almost as an aside before conversational tone resumes] I did. I started school as a rising five, but I’d had the meningitis before I was two and had recovered well before schooling was even on the horizon. But even then, my case was well enough known for a session when we, myself and my mother - I can remember it well, right to this day - sat and talked with the headmaster about any special needs I might have. It was assumed that I would need special provisions to cope with my anticipated intellectual deficiencies....
C Your meningitis was bacterial?
T Was it? I’ve never seen any documents, or talked to anyone about it, except my mother and a couple of relatives in the village who remembered me as an infant.
C [agitatedly] I can fill in some detail here, if I may, since I have bothered to check the records, which were made available to me when I was researching the programme... You had bacterial meningitis when you were eighteen months old. It was treated with...
T[interrupts] penicillin... the wonder drug... the wonders of science saved me...
C Indeed... You were treated with penicillin and responded well. But your file records that a year later you displayed the characteristics of ‘persistent neurological defects’.
T Does it? [pauses to look directly at CG] I wonder how you got access to that? It seems you have far-reaching influence, Christine.
C And so your teachers thought you may need special provision... and when you started school it was clear right from the beginning that indeed you did warrant special treatment, but not the kind that had been predicted...
T [laughs] I blame the IQ tests. I seemed to be very good at them, or at whatever they gave to little ‘uns in those days to place them in the pecking order.
C You were a genius from the start.
T Genius? Now there’s a word. You were calling me a fraud a minute ago...
[general laughter from both participants]
C Let’s compromise by saying that you were good at sums...
T I certainly was. I was also well trained. I can remember standing next to my mother in the kitchen. She had, of course, already gone through this with my older brothers, so she was something of a dab hand at it by then. I did mental arithmetic while she did the chores. She would throw problems at me and I would answer. It ranged from two bags delivered here, three there, two there, four here and how many bags is that all together.... right up to Mr Dean bought two bags at one and tuppence each, so how much change should he get from half a crown?
C So by the time you got to school...
T I was way ahead of my peers, or appeared to be. I think she worked me harder than the others. It was a way of her proving that the meningitis would not have any long-term effect.
C And it didn’t.
T Seems like it.
C And so you were accelerated...
T [laughs] It sounds like my personal history is a list of what was done to me.
[three second cut to full face CG, smiling gently, and then full face, three seconds, TC, who has an open-eyed stare]
T Indeed I was. So rather than being labelled ‘retarded’, which was the word then in vogue, I became ‘accelerated’... and I have been driven ever since.
[two second cut to CG who does not react, return to wide shot]
C Just out of interest, and this may be off the point, but have you ever been ‘disabled’?
T Labelled so, yes. In actuality... we could discuss that for a long time... material for another series, Christine.
[CG laughs]
C So back to your school days. You learned to play chess, I believe?
T Yes, I was six, I think, when I started. There was an old bloke two houses down from us. He taught me. He was house-bound, an ex-miner and staunch socialist, an ideologue if you like. He was pensioned off from the pit early because his chest was full of dust. He died when I was about ten. Turned out he was sixty-two, but he looked absolutely ancient. He was grateful for the company. I was grateful he taught me chess. We played most days, after school. I enjoyed every game.
C And you became quite good at it, good enough to be County champion at fourteen.
T Indeed, I did. But in that world, being County champion at fourteen is no big deal. ‘Good’ is being a world champion contender by twelve.
C And your interest in chess came to an end the following year when your cancer was diagnosed.
T Indeed. Your research is accurate again, though I detect a little personal experience creeping in...
[full face to CG smiling]
T If this were any old interview, I would congratulate you on the quality of your research, but since we went through the experience together, Chris, I will hold back on the praise.
C Thank you... I’ll try to repay the compliment. You gave up your chess...
T Indeed, when my cancer was diagnosed, there were treatment sessions, consultations, examinations, lots of waiting around. Playing chess needed someone to play with, even if I did have a travelling set. My mother didn’t play, and she was the person with me most of the time, when I went to the
hospital. I played against myself, and sometimes I followed published games from championships, but it wasn’t easy, holding a book open, balancing a chess set, however small, on my one good leg - the other was often too painful to touch - and moving the pieces as well. It was also impossible to concentrate. In addition, I soon began to encounter on a regular basis a certain person who was on a similar regime to my own, and she didn’t play chess either at the time...
C ...and still doesn’t...
T Let’s say I developed new priorities.
C You developed an eye for skirt?
T [laughs] You were always in trousers, Christine. Your leg was as gammy as mine and you didn’t like to show it off in public. [leans forward and looks down] Things haven’t changed, I see, still in trousers...
C [smiling] Will you describe what happened?
T I can almost relive it, never mind describe it... Well, the bare bones of it were, so to speak, a series of symptoms - pain in the knee, general weakness, swelling, inflammation... I had some initial treatment for strains and the like, but of course it did not respond. X-rays suggested something more profoundly wrong and then exploratory work and a biopsy identified a bone tumour.
C Osteosarcoma.
T That’s the beast, all right. I had some radiotherapy and some chemo as well. I was convinced they were trying things out on me, without knowing whether they would do me any good. I remember being in hospital after the first set of treatment, and feeling as sick as a dog... I remember there was a stainless steel kidney bowl at my side on the bed all the time. Whenever I tried to move I threw up, despite the fact that there couldn’t be anything left in my stomach. It was pretty awful at the time, and almost as bad when remembered. And then there were the visitors, some of whom didn’t help...
C I know what you are going to say... I visited you just after he’d left and we had a good laugh. It was the vicar...
T [laughs] Your memory is as good as mine on this issue. Indeed it was the vicar. I had just thrown up about four times, despite the fact that I’d had no food for a day and a half. The vicar from Cottlestone had come to visit me...
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