Brian Blakemore ready to retire after 40 years with Barclays

Oct 4 2008

News reaches me that Brian Blakemore, well known figure (and I use that word intentionally) on the Birmingham financial scene and one time head of Barclays Private Equity in the Midlands, is all set to hang up his cheque book.

Brian is about to retire after some 40 years with Barclays. A rare feat.

He tells guests at one of his many farewell functions how much he has enjoyed his time with the business – culminating in his role as investor relations director at the private equity house where he raised more than five billion euros (some sort of foreign currency) from players worldwide – bet he couldn’t do it in today’s climate.

However, his start in life was more modest – serving behind the counter at Barclays Bank’s Bordesley branch.

“One of our customers was a strip club from just down the road,” he recalls vividly. “In those days, the bank closed at 3pm so virtually the last transaction of every day was a deposit of the lunchtime takings from the club. Not unnaturally, there was a good deal of competition as to who might be serving on the counter – for the deposits were normally made by one of the club’s rather attractive ladies who seemed to wear little more than a fur coat!”

Phew! Hot money.

----------

Tim Watts' 60th birthday party sounds a hoot. It seems it had a 1920s Great Gatsby theme.

One presumes Tim went as Al Capone, but my spies are yet to report back on that one.

Jasper Carrott turned up as a sultan.

Nearly everyone hired clothes. Derek Inman luckily didn’t need to ... just went into his wardrobe and dressed as normal!

----------

For goodness sake, get the girl to the wedding on time.

Even Birmingham Future chairman Matt Taylor was getting a little jittery as it went half an hour over time and bride to be Ruth Marshall still hadn’t shown.

Seems the Bentley – provided by photographer Tony Flanagan – refused to start.

Flanagan blames the driver. Claims he “flooded” the engine.

Anyway, the poor kid eventually arrives at church in a Renault Clio.

Still, she signed on the dotted line and looked radiant. So all’s well that ends well.

Meanwhile, Flanagan is plotting revenge on Bright.

It seems he has photographs from last week’s Press Ball of John Duckers, Bright’s vicar on earth and former business editor of this organ, slumped fast asleep in his chair.

And he is threatening to expose the errant hack.

Live by the sword; die by the sword.

But there is a long history of Duckers slumping down walls and falling over at Press Club Balls, so will anyone notice?

The Taylors are honeymooning in the Maldives incidentally.

Seems they wanted to go there before global warming sees the place swamped for ever.

Ah, bless.

----------

Along to see the latest movie from old mate Gary Smith, head of Intandem Films.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People stars the likes of Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson and Megan Fox.

It’s a comedy about a British writer struggling to fit in at a high-profile magazine in New York.

The charity screening in aid of Cure Leukaemia was at Cineworld at Five Ways and the picture is out now.

Lots of Birmingham’s beautiful people were there … and Bright.

Sports journalist Gary Newbon is as irreverent as ever and has brought the wife out for an “airing”.

Bob Warman is along but not in laughing mood – Central had that day announced they were axing nearly half their staff.

Nobody yet seems to know who is staying or going, albeit the word on the street for some time has been that the surviving main presenters would be Bob and Sameena Ali-Khan.

We shall see in due course.

Birmingham Chamber spin doctor John Lamb is there in the week he turns 65.

It would be nice to tease him that he doesn’t look a day over …well, 65, but there’s plenty of life in the boy yet.

And my rating of the film?

My daughter’s screen magazine gave it three stars out of five, which is probably about right.

Certainly one of the best out of the Smith empire.

It had me laughing and I did find it very enjoyable. The ending is rubbish but it is nevertheless well worth a look.

A good effort and should do well.

----------

News from chartered surveyor Glyn Pitchford.

Pitchford, who after an unfortunate spell checker error in this column some years back is known as Pitchfork in some circles, has opened an “international office”.

Glyn Pitchford Consultancy is now in operation at Valldemossa, Mallorca.

Which just happens to be Pitchford’s holiday home!

“As I’m still running my Solihull office I’ll be unable to recruit permanent staff just yet,” he opines.

By that I think he means the wife has put the mockers on him hiring a “waitress”.

He notes: “Sorry I couldn’t invite you to the official opening, but couldn’t get enough supplies of Gordons up the mountain to cater for your needs.”

Cheeky swine.

And I fancied a bit of a tan as well, having not seen the sun all summer.

Anyway, here’s the Pitchford top tips for a successful overseas office.

Abundant sunshine. Sea views. Dappled shade of an old olive tree. G&T. Lemon grove– essential ingredient to aforementioned refreshment. Cigar hand-rolled off the thighs of a Cuban beauty.

And Pitchford’s final response: “Eat your heart out...”

Little does he know as he reads this that the taxman has already opened a Pitchford file.

Yes, Bright can be a nasty piece of work when he wants to be.

Don’t worry Glyn, just a joke. Had you going for a moment though!

----------

If you had purchased £1,000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, your £1,000 would have hit somewhere around £16.50, £1,000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5 or actually nothing, but if you bought £1,000 worth of canned beer one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £21.40.

So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.

The Bright solution to the world’s financial troubles.

----------

Just when we thought that Birmingham Press Club had offloaded all its massively expensive silk ties, another mountain of the things appears.

It seems claims that lawyer Adrian Hindmarsh had sold the last of them to great relief all round proved a touch premature.

Apparently, someone forget there was another garage lock-up full.

Oh well.

Hindmarsh incidentally appears to have fled the country and the wrath of Bright, or maybe on holiday in Francedoing the wine trail.

Quotes appear on the mobile such as: “Am now in Cognac sampling the local produce. Was in Bordeaux.”

Anyway.

Get your Press Club ties here, roll up for your lovely Press Club ties …

I don’t know, where’s Del Boy when you need him?

----------

PR star Lucie Ray has been telling me how she came to cuddle up close to … a load of courgettes.

It seems she had shot off to her local Waitrose in Balsall Common when she spotted Birmingham Press Club chairman John Lamb and partner Lisa out doing the weekly shop.

Problem? After all, she’s friends with both of them.

Don’t be silly, of course there was.

“I popped in for some BBQ food and didn’t have any make-up on!” she wails.

Crisis!

“So I hid in the frozen food section under a pile of courgettes.”

Yeah, a likely tale, but we’ll believe you.

Don’t worry all you blokes out there who have no idea what the fuss was about – it’s a girl thing.

----------

You might have thought the impact of the credit crunch was bad here, but it appears even worse in the West Indies.

An informant tells me a delegation of industrialists from the Caribbean visiting the Midlands flew economy class both ways and were required to use only off peak rail fares.

Man, times is tough.