by Tim Heath
17
Brendan William Albert Charles was born in a hospital just outside Woking on the 4th March 1970, in the affluent county of Surrey, in the south of England. His parents were middle class and wealthy, they provided a happy and full education that saw him going to an expensive private boys’ school. He went to a good university on the back of the top marks he attained there. It was while studying at university that he first met a quiet but attractive girl named Sally Anne Taylor. They quickly fell in love, getting married the autumn after he finished, though she still had two years left to go on her four-year business studies degree. Brendan had always been one for business, and in his early days, he always seemed to have some idea on the go. He took some temping jobs between interviews to help pay the bills, waiting for the right opportunity to come along. His parents’ constantly open purse meant he wasn’t hugely motivated to do much for himself, initially anyway.
It wasn’t until after he’d been married for three years and with the first child on the way, that Brendan decided that he alone was going to provide for his family and he took a job at a small family run insurance broker who had been offering him an opening for some time.
In no time at all, he had transformed the little firm and even had persuaded the ageing owner to buy out one of their local rivals, something his boss had been reluctant to do at the time. But Brendan had taken a loan from the bank and offered to go halves with him on the new purchase as long as they would become partners in the newly merged firm. To Brendan’s surprise, he had agreed, clearly taken along with the faster pace of life since Brendan’s arrival and perhaps wanting one last challenge before retirement in the not too distant future. Brendan had efficiently bought into a more substantial company as a joint owner, and when his boss did retire, Brendan agreed to buy out the remaining half, funding it by an increased loan from the bank. Brendan's parents were vocal in their concerned, at the time, about their son's willingness to get into so much debt, and offered to loan him the money themselves. The newly independent Brendan saw that as taking the easy route and having just turned thirty-one, he knew it was time he stood on his own two feet.
He put all his energy and time into the new firm and by his thirty-second birthday, he became the sole owner. Brendan was due to open his second branch, and business continued to grow from then on. Over the next five years, while his second and later third children were born, Brendan had got a real taste for takeovers and had taken the plunge eight times, leaving himself with a market-leading insurance broker, which had also by then become the largest in the country.
As the firm continued to find newer ways to remain competitive in a hostile international market, when an economic depression threatened to circle the world, Brendan implemented a new strategy over the next decade that was to revolutionise his business interests. Initially, it had been his father handing over the family business on his retirement: a small but thriving firm within the service sector. That had been a bit of a problem for Brendan, who was by now already running a multi-million-pound company himself. But with conditions worsening within the insurance market, it became clear to him that he needed to expand his interests into other markets to broaden the risk and provide financial stability for his family’s increasingly luxurious standard of living.
He discovered that similar principles to those that had guided his success in the insurance market could be applied to his father’s firm, with some tweaking here and there. The key was in getting the right people in the right places. Immediately Brendan started looking more closely at which markets he could next exploit. He handed over much of his day to day work within the insurance brokerage to his more than capable management team.
At the close of that decade Brendan had branched out into twelve new markets, each time buying into well established but underperforming companies and quickly growing them through new business practices and acquisitions. He picked up the award of Business Man of the Year three times along the way and became a well-known person, not only in the business world but increasingly through media interviews and the occasional television guest appearance. He had been reluctant to do too much in the early days, but he soon began to understand the importance that publicity could play.
By the age of fifty he was the wealthiest Englishman in the country, and yet he did much of the hands-on stuff himself because he still enjoyed it so much. He had by now become a household name, helped mainly by some TV series that used him as an on-screen advisor, a surprising role at first but one which Brendan grew to enjoy, seeing the chance to train up and mentor younger men and women to become what their potential suggested. He’d provided the very best education for his three children, and they’d done very well, though just having the family name had meant they wouldn’t ever really have to try too hard to make it on their own. Brendan was, therefore, able to take early retirement at fifty-five from day to day running of all sixty-three companies that now formed the BC Holdings Group. That had taken a few people by surprise, but his oldest son was ideally placed to take things on, which he did.
Brendan was now able to spend lots of time travelling, something he hadn’t had much chance to do before but something he enjoyed immensely, and he spent an incredible year with his wife going right around the world. After that he split his time between family and the media, signing up for more television work and enjoying every minute of his life.
That was how things had worked out before Nigel Gamble came and met the thirty-year-old Brendan a full two years before his big break. Knowing all he knew of the man at the top of the BC Holdings Group, Nigel offered him the world to get him to work for him, which Brendan had accepted, as at that time, before the birth of his first child, he was still mostly unmotivated and just passing the time. Nigel, therefore, got to him at the perfect moment, and while Brendan’s life, as it now was, had gone in a very different direction, he had still enjoyed much of the success that had gone with that first experience. And Brendan, unable to be aware of how things could have been, only knowing how things now were, thought life was great. For Nigel it made life so much easier, having someone of Brendan’s capability within his ranks, there to serve his every requirement, there to make him millions upon millions and act as his arms, legs and even face, without any danger to himself. The only cost was the top wage he needed to pay Brendan, but that was an insignificant amount compared to what he could do for him. Brendan, ever the businessman, quickly grew at first to respect Nigel because as he saw it, everything his boss touched turned to gold. He recognised, or so he interpreted, the workings of a business genius and rarely did he even question something he was asked to do, and on those rare occasions when he did, he was quickly put in his place.
So Nigel had effectively changed Brendan’s life for good. From someone who’d done things himself into someone who worked with a group very similar to what he would have produced on his own. The wealth was now with Nigel though. Brendan was always well rewarded and genuinely felt quite happy for many years, until those thoughts started to surface, almost his conscience deep within himself, telling him he could have done more. That he could have been more, not a number two but a number one––the man, the leading man, the top dog.
But it was too late for him now. While Nigel had taken something away from his life, though he knew not what, he couldn’t take his family away, which was why Brendan put up such a defensive barrier between work life and home life. That wasn’t missed, though, either by his children or wife, the fact that he’d worked with the Gamble Holdings Group for a long time, but not once had any of them met or seen his employer. These things however never got discussed. They didn’t matter. As things now were, this was always how it had been, and Brendan believed there was no need to change such seemingly unimportant things anyway.
Sir Tommy Lawrence, who had been knighted by the King on his second visit to Buckingham Palace, had become the most celebrated English manager of all time in a career spanning thirty plus years. From his humble beginnings at
the boys’ club where he had played, he’d tried his hand out at management in his early thirties as his playing days were coming to an end. It was at one of these games that a Manchester United scout was present, there to watch some of the lads who had been getting rave reviews under the leadership of Tommy. Not only did a number of the lads get signed up, but so did the man that the club realised was behind their success, Tommy Lawrence. He spent only a short time within the youth set-up before joining the first team coaching staff once he’d got the required badges. The then current manager, struggling to live up to the successes of previous managers that included the great Sir Alex Ferguson, was suddenly admitted to hospital over the busy Christmas fixture period and Tommy was asked to fill in at short notice. He did such a good job that when the previous manager had recovered his health and had returned to guide the side once more, as soon as the team’s improved form started to slip again the old guy was out and Tommy, just turning thirty-five, was sensationally ushered in as the new manager. And though young, because of his character and successes so far with the club, he was a popular choice, and his career never looked back. Manchester United won the league title at the end of that season. The last time they had won had been ten years before, and even that had been a one-off, as the team then was nothing like the United of the decades either side of the Millennium when Sir Alex Ferguson had made his name building four complete teams. Much of the success had come from a group of young lads that Tommy had taken with him from that boys’ club when United had first signed him.
Tommy brought the glory days back to the Old Trafford outfit, and his high profile life was even more in the spotlight when he was seen together with the world-famous model turned Hollywood actress Jessica Ponter. The glossy magazines lapped up the story and were falling over themselves trying to outdo each other, the likes of which had not been seen since the early days of David Beckham and Posh Spice.
They married within the year, and there was not a television station or a newspaper that didn’t make some mention of the event. There was something about the couple that represented the very best of what it meant to be British, at a time when few people thought in that way. With political problems at home and abroad, as well as the worsening economic situations and the rising crime rates coupled with the worst teenage pregnancy rates anywhere in the world, it seemed that marriage as an institution was gone. But that appeared to change almost overnight. Suddenly the country had a couple that they would listen to, and being fully aware of their unique position, Tommy and Jessica did their best to unite a nation that for too long had stood divided. Jessica took a break from her flourishing acting career to be the public face of the couple, and she taught on marriage and raising children, though due to unknown complications the couple were never able to have children of their own. That only added to their public adoration, Jessica becoming very vocal and supportive to all those who were not able to have children themselves.
Tommy continued to focus on his career as well and the next fifteen years saw him outdo even the great Sir Alex concerning the number of trophies he won for the club, breaking all previous records both at home and in Europe. Realising a dream, he took a break from domestic football and answered the call from the FA to become the highest paid international manager of all time, and in his ten years as the national team manager, he guided them to successive World Cup wins as well as one European Championship. It was after that first World Cup win that Tommy made his first trip to the Palace to pick up his CBE. Tommy Lawrence could have gone anywhere in the world of football, but he decided to call an end to his international days. Following the successful defence of the team’s World Cup triumph from four years earlier, this time on home soil, a packed Wembley stadium hosted one of its greatest games since its rebuilding. The nation watched, once again celebrating on the streets, parties uniting once torn communities and bringing people closer together than ever before. It seemed that the whole country was happy once more, that the harsh days were behind them and that brighter things were to come.
Tommy instead decided to take a break from football, intending to return once again to club management, to Manchester United, it was presumed, though the opportunity never came.
While the couple was travelling around the world in various humanitarian roles, such was their world renown, the twin-engined plane they were flying in across a barren part of Africa crash-landed, killing Tommy instantly and leaving Jessica in the hospital for six painful months while they tried to mend her badly broken back. They eventually managed that, though she would never be able to walk very far without pain again.
She’d missed her husband’s funeral, his body flown back to England before receiving a state send-off in the grandest of fashions, the country in mourning at the death of someone they’d seen as royalty.
Jessica continued her work on the humanitarian side but her life was never the same, and she never went a day without thinking about her Tommy. Life suddenly caught up with her, she seemed to age overnight and before long she too was out of the spotlight, giving up on almost all her engagements to live out her remaining years effectively as a recluse.
Such had been their mark on history, their impression that had set the standards in so many ways, like a Nelson Mandela or Princess Diana had done decades before. No one after them could grow up and not know about the couple that had lived their married life, it seemed, on the front pages and had done so much to change a nation that had before been slipping lower and lower, getting worse by the day. Therefore, when Nigel Gamble had come back, it was all too tempting for him to break into their past and get to them before everything happened, which he did with the help of Brendan.
Brendan had already befriended Jessica, as he’d been instructed, taking the place of her father who had been removed from the picture in such a ruthless fashion. Tommy and Jessica meeting as they did and then being broken up had disrupted things enough for history to have changed. Tommy had therefore not been at that training session when the United scouts came looking, though in fact a scout never came because without the leadership of Tommy training them for another year, the rave reviews that there had once never happened.
Nigel didn’t care what these changes would do to others. What he tried to tell himself was that he was saving the couple from the heartbreak of separation but in reality even he didn’t believe that for long, and it just became a game––he could do it, so he did. In his heart, he was jealous of what they seemed to have with each other and the fame to go with it, the world-changing potential was just too much to let go off without the chance to try and control it, to be on the inside of it all and have a piece of the pie.
With Tommy stuck away working under Brendan, Nigel was amazed at how quickly, given the right circumstances, someone’s whole reality could change. Deep down though he knew in Tommy, there was this ability to be an excellent manager and because of his brief encounter with Jessica already they had the perfect way to control him. So when the time came, as it had now done, he’d jumped at the chance to manage a club that they purchased and do what they asked. For Nigel, it was no gamble at all. He’d cherry-picked the very best manager the country had ever produced, initially having clipped his wings to tame him and control him. He gave him his big break, while at the same time, knowing the emerging players who would go on to be great footballers, bringing them in at a young age and putting them under Tommy’s guidance. It was all inevitably going to be a winning formula.
In everything Nigel Gamble, and therefore Brendan Charles, had done, there were many skeletons in the closet, so much so that nothing could get discussed. Of course, Brendan was actually in the dark himself, but Nigel let him believe he was on the inside. One of the most significant skeletons though had been the way they had broken into the life of Jessica Ponter.
A long time before she’d met Tommy Lawrence, she had had a name for herself. With her father’s business doing well, and with her parents’ backing the whole way, Jessica had gone to an evening dram
a school in which she first started stepping out, her gifting clear from even the first lesson. She also started doing some modelling, and she’d never felt happier. Her father backed her up the whole way, the strong, loving man who she was so proud of, offering all the financial help he could, which was a lot because of the success of the business.
Jessica had been modelling for eighteen months when the chance came up to do some acting in a small part of a new film being made not far from her. It was while on set that she met an American director who immediately saw her potential and word spread. Before long she was in her first Hollywood film, not in a lead role but her talent was spotted, and the offers came flooding in.
So when she met Tommy Lawrence at one of her UK Premiers, it was Tommy who was dazzled by the presence of such fame and beauty.
Therefore, for Nigel, the opening had almost presented itself by chance. With all the technology and computer equipment he had to offer, having just stolen the inventions of the future to package them as his own in the past, his firm, Ample Tech, had rapidly grown and it was this that had affected all other companies within the market, including that of Jessica’s father.
