WHENEVER I HEAR THAT SONG

By Martin Broughton

Few can have had as interesting or varied a career as Martin Broughton - a very British businessman. And just when he thought he'd retired, in 2022 Martin found himself heading a bid for Chelsea FC. A fascinating inside story in itself, it provides a topical dimension to this engaging memoir.

Martin recounts his start at the very

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Elms Books Ltd
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781910533611

Martin Broughton

Martin Broughton had a modest childhood in London's Fulham. After Westminster City Grammar School, he completed his accountant's training. Realising that he wanted to see the world, he became a travelling auditor for the tobacco giant BAT. Twenty-two years later, and after many countries and promotions, he was appointed CEO. Since his retirement in 2004, he has been much in demand and continued to be one of the most prominent and influential businessmen of his generation. Always one for a challenge, many new business opportunities presented themselves including - Chairmanship of British Airways and its merger into the International Airlines Group, Presidency of the Confederation of British Industry, involvement in F1 Grand Prix motor racing, and Chairmanship of Liverpool Football Club at a time when a shrewd and steady hand was needed to find an acceptable new owner for this iconic club - this was not without a vigorous legal battle. Just when he thought he had fully retired, in 2022 he found himself heading a bid for Chelsea FC. Martin Broughton was knighted in 2011 for services to business All through this book run additional themes - Martin's love of music, hence its title and the chapter headings, the importance of family and finally, in partnership with his wife - Jocelyn, an abiding passion for horse racing.

Book preview

Overture

It was becoming increasingly hard to breathe. It wasn’t like drowning for I knew all too well what that felt like. Instead, it was a gasping for air, a sensation that I couldn’t quite get enough oxygen for my body to function properly. Only a few weeks before I was the very picture of health but now I struggled to walk more than a few steps at a time. I had been to several doctors, osteopaths and specialists and they had ruled out all the obvious suspects – in fact the best they could do was shrug and suggest perhaps it was ‘something viral.’ At night I would get feverish, drenching the sheets in sweat, then finding myself overwhelmed with extreme chills. During the day I would muster up whatever energy I could find to just complete basic tasks, determined to keep up with our busy lives, but other random symptoms (stiff neck, back pain, swollen wrist) would start to concern me. I had started losing a significant amount of weight, becoming disinter­ested in food and drink. Some days there were hints of improvement, a temporary reprieve, and my wife, Jocelyn, and I would head into London for a Chelsea match, or dinner or a night at the theatre. But after several weeks of no improvements, and an increasingly steady decline, the doctors sent me for an MRI and CT scans.

On the evening of the 6 May 2014 Jocelyn and I were heading to the National Theatre to see A Taste of Honey when I received a call from a doctor at the London Clinic. He informed me that, due to a stroke of luck, one of the technicians had noticed something alarming on my lungs and that I was to admit myself to the hospital immediately. I explained that I had theatre tickets so it would be the following morning before I was able to do that when his voice took on a greater sense of urgency. There was to be no debate and reluctantly I headed to hospital.

The image that the technician had been given to analyse was primarily of my liver but fortunately it also contained the lower part of my lungs where he spotted a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism, a clot in the lungs. Prompt treatment was required to break up the clot and greatly reduce the risk of death, hence the urgency. I was put straight on to an oxygen mask and treatment was started immediately. I went to sleep hopeful that the problem would shortly be resolved.

Instead, I found myself living at the London Clinic for 60 days. Fixing the embolism was the easy part. The doctors discovered that the embolism had been caused by bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the heart valve. During that time I learned a lot about different bacterial strains (this was a streptococci) and which antibiotics they responded to best (penicillin). The whole family started analysing my blood samples for signs of improvement. The infection had reached excessively high levels: certain inflammatory markers in the blood suggest an infection (usually these numbers would fall between 0-30), when I was admitted to hospital the numbers were at 240. Over the previous six weeks the bacteria had built up quite a home ‘a vege­tation’ on my heart valve and it had wreaked havoc on my body.

As I lay in hospital for two months on a four-hourly drip I suddenly felt aged and vulnerable. I started considering all the things I had not yet shared with my children about my life. I recalled how Jocelyn had always lamented the fact that she had not asked her parents enough questions about their background, upbringing, and general history. Thirty plus years on from their deaths she would still love to learn more about them. Thus, was planted the kernel of this narrative which started out as nothing more than providing a history for the family to learn more about the life I have been privileged to lead.

I realised that if ever I was going to write this personal history, I had better start focusing on it. Of course, when I recovered and reverted to working as normal the idea went into abeyance for a while but never went away. I finally started it over twelve months ago and realised that almost every major episode was indelibly linked to music in some form and then it seemed to take on a life of its own.

chapter 1

Que Será, Será

The future’s not ours to see, Que Será, Será

Doris Day*

When i think back to my childhood, I remember a happy, innocent time spent largely playing with my identical twin brother, Steve. It always seemed such a simple and straightforward era to me, but I suspect that it did not seem that way to my parents who had a pretty difficult time making ends meet.

Dad was disabled. He had spent most of his teenage years from the age of 11 to 18 in hospital with tuberculosis of the left leg. Initially the doctors had managed to save the leg but after a few months release, it recurred, and he had it amputated above the knee. Much of the rest of the time was spent recuperating. Today things have changed so much that recuper­ation can be amazingly fast for the determined, but it took a lot longer back then. I am ashamed to say I never really asked him very much about what life was like confined to a hospital bed for years. It must have been horrendously boring and frustrating.

I know he had a teacher come in once or twice a week but all those years in hospital meant he had little formal education, although he made up for it by becoming a prolific reader.

Dad was quite musical – violin at first and later playing drums in a group. According to my sister, Viv, his 21st birthday lasted three days and three nights playing the drums, but this depicts a father I simply don’t recognise. I never saw him play an instrument nor even recall him ever going to a party! I also never saw him swim but I am reliably informed that he swam round Southend Pier soon after the amputation which I still find incredible.

Dad did various jobs but was essentially a ‘coachtrimmer’. This is a lost art like so many others. In today’s throwaway society people change their cars often. Not so back then. So, the role of the coachtrimmer was to reupholster the car seats and the roof lining so that an old car could look new on the inside. Like redecorating a house. He worked on cars for some interesting people, such as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor who had a black Rolls Royce with brilliant white shag carpets, and Sean Connery at the height of his James Bond fame who enjoyed popping in and just chatting.

It did not pay very well so Mum had to go out and work as well. Mostly she did local office work, although she worked at Peter Jones for a while. Without any of the modern conveniences of daily life it must have been quite tough bringing up three small children and working at the same time.

With them both going out to work it put a lot of responsibility on Viv’s young shoulders. She is only four years older than us twins but had to look after us from quite a young age – she must have only been about nine. That would be illegal today and may have been back then too, but there was no affordable alternative.

The responsibility was not all plain sailing for Viv. Once, when the three of us were out on a Sunday School outing in Littlehampton I got lost. We had all been playing on the crowded beach and paddling in the sea. Suddenly I lost my footing and went under which frightened the hell out of me and I panicked. Sea water in my eyes and up my nose made me start crying. I looked around but couldn’t see anyone I knew. I stumbled back up on to the beach but everyone seemed to have disappeared.

Soon an older lady saw I was distressed and took me off to a ‘Lost Children’ meeting point where I sat for what seemed an eternity. Eventually the Sunday School teacher found me at the meeting point and reconnected us. Upsetting as that was for me, Viv was even more distraught. I’m not sure whether she was more relieved to find me alive or that she no longer had to explain to Mum and Dad that she had lost her seven-year-old brother. That incident had a long-term impact. It gave me a lifelong aversion to swimming, and it probably explains why Viv has never wanted any responsibility over others in her working life.

Home was Parsons Green in Fulham. Today it is a very fashionable bor­ough which it was not until some smart estate agent started referring to it as ‘West Chelsea’. Although Dad had borrowed up to the hilt to buy our house for £1,200 back in 1950, he had to let out upstairs to help pay the mortgage.

It seems strange now to recall that life included a weekly Saturday night bath in a bathtub in front of the coal fire in the living room as that was the only room we could afford to heat. The bathtub was filled by water heated up in a kettle on the stove so took quite a long time to get ready. Viv went first and then Steve and me in the same water topped up with a bit more hot water. The loo was outside which was not very convenient when it was raining but meant you did not stay in there any longer than necessary, particularly in winter! Clothes washing was done by Mum in a ‘copper’ and drying was initiated by squeezing clothes through a mangle before being hung up in front of the fire. Mum seemed to take all the drudgery in her stride, but truth is, she seemed to take everything in her stride.

Things had got a bit better by the time we were teenagers. Our tenant died and we took over the whole house. A proper bathroom! Steve and I shared an upstairs bedroom and Viv had her own next to ours. There was still no heating so sometimes in winter we woke to frost on the inside of the windows, but this was heaven. A second-hand billiard table was procured and put downstairs into our old bedroom, so we played a lot of snooker. When Dad sold the house in the late Seventies for £60,000 his capital gain was twice his entire career earnings which by my cal­culation amounted to about £25,000.

Food was very predictable. We did not have a fridge (and hardly anyone had a freezer) so food was kept fresh in a small ‘safe’ which was in the cellar. The main meal of the week was the Sunday Roast; alternately beef, lamb, and pork with all the trimmings, but never chicken which was not available in the Fifties. It was followed with a large pudding, treacle being my favourite. Steve and I tried to eat as slowly as possible dragging things out with the intention that we would be too late to go to Sunday School by the time we finished. Occasionally the plan worked, but our ulterior motive must have been obvious to everyone as any other meal we always ate fast, wanting to eat while the food was still hot.

Monday night was cold meat leftovers and Tuesday night was the remaining leftovers minced up and served with baked beans. If there was any variety it was on Wednesday or Thursday and my favourite was Toad in the Hole, usually made with sausages but sometimes with lamb noisettes. Friday was always fish – even though we were not Catholics, it was somehow a family tradition. It is strange looking back to realise that this was an era before pasta, pizza or burgers and the only known version of rice was rice pudding, an awful milk based soggy mess. Neither Steve nor I was strong on vegetables, although truth is, we mostly had vegetables out of a tin. In fact, as a child I assumed anything in a tin must be a veget­able, including baked beans and tinned spaghetti.

Looking back, the strangest ‘meal’ of the day was supper. Supper was taken immediately before bedtime and normally consisted of two slices of white bread and dripping. For those who have never tasted this delicacy, dripping is congealed fat that has melted and dripped from roast meat, in our case the Sunday roast. If dripping was finished for the week then it was replaced by two slices of white bread covered in margarine with granulated white sugar spread on top. Delicious!

We never had a TV until I had left school, so the big treat of the week was to visit my grandparents as they had one. They lived about a mile away and Viv, Steve and I would walk over there late afternoon on Sun­days, and then Mum and Dad would come over and collect us between 8–9pm and walk us home. We never had a car, so walking and public transport were the only options.

I never really knew my Mother’s parents. Her mother died while we were very young and her father – ‘Grandad Faulkner’ – took his own life when we were about seven. All the experts describe how a suicide in the family has long term emotional and psychological impacts as those left behind question whether they could have prevented the suicide. I never saw any of that in Mum. Steve and I had walked home from school as usual but unusually Mum was not there to meet us. Viv was there and told us Mum had gone down to see Grandad Faulkner. About an hour later Mum returned and calmly said ‘Grandad Faulkner has died. He was upset and put his head in the oven and gassed himself. Now, what would you like for tea?’ Mum was always the unflappable one and this was a classic example. It is a trait that I was fortunate to inherit. A few days later she and Dad went to the funeral and that was the last we heard about it. Well, perhaps not quite the last – Mum did get very upset when she came home a couple of years later and found Viv with her head in our gas oven, but Viv was just using the oven to dry her hair with curlers in, as we did not have any hair dryer at home.

I was in my late teenage years before it struck me as odd that although our name was Broughton, one set of grandparents were Faulkner and the other set Spencer. It turned out that Grandad (Spencer) was really my father’s stepfather and that his actual father had died when Dad was young. It all sounded rather heroic as he had thrown himself in front of a runaway horse to save some young children and was killed in the process – or at least that was the story I believed for decades. When Viv started looking into our family tree a few years back she discovered it was not quite true. He was a hero and was injured by the runaway horse but died of tuber-­ culosis four years later when Dad was seven.

Unlike my sister who hated school, Steve and I were diligent albeit moderate students at primary school. My leaving school report shows I came 13th out of 40 pupils in the class and the teacher’s remarks were ‘Both he and Stephen appear models of brotherly behaviour and are popular with their classmates although they seem content just to have each other’s company. I am ashamed to confess that I still can never be sure which is which, but I shall miss two such pleasant lads’.

In those days there was a Tripartite System of State Schools – Grammar, Central and Secondary Modern – which was phased out in favour of Comprehensive Schools a few years later. Viv went on to a Central School and we were expecting to do the same after the 11 Plus exam as our form positions did not suggest we would be amongst the small number expected to get into Grammar School. So, there was surprise all round when we both got to Grammar School. No one in the family knew much about such schools, so we eliminated some because they offered rugby instead of football, and ended up choosing West­minster City Grammar, near Victoria, as our best friend, Alan, wanted to go there to join his elder brother.

Every child suffers anxiety from being the ‘new boy or girl’ and the first morning is the most intimidating of all. Everything is new. The custom at Westminster City was to collect all the new boys in the gym awaiting allocation. The gym seemed cavernous and cold with scary wall bars all round it. Being a twin should have made us less anxious than the other boys, at least we were not alone, but that was not how it felt at the time.

The teacher read out the surnames of all the boys in the first group who were going into ‘Lower Three G’. I have never understood why the First Year was called Lower Third (or more colloquially ‘The Turds’ by the older boys) but the G referred to Mr Grant who was the Form Teacher. When called, each boy stood up and went to the front ready to be taken off to the unknown. ‘Alexiou . . . Barnes. . . Bell . . . Broughton . . .’ Steve and I looked at each other – Broughton? Which Broughton? We were way too timid to ask which one, so being the elder I got up and joined that class. It was fully six months later before we discovered we were both in the wrong class.

There was not much money for ‘extra-curricular’ activities, but Dad introduced us to football in the 1954–55 season when we were seven. It was a Football Combination match (Reserve team) at Stamford Bridge. In a ground that could hold 75,000 for a First Division match, there must have been all of 2,000 attending. Strangely, I cannot remember who the opposition team was as I only had eyes for Chelsea as that was the team Dad supported. I do remember clearly that it was a nil-nil draw but that did not matter, Steve and I were smitten. The ground seemed huge – it was all standing on the terraces back then with just one rather ram­shackle stand on the East side and we were on the West side. The speed at which the match was played was mesmerising to two seven-year-old boys. Viv also went with us and was so bored she has never watched another football match in her life.

Later in the season we were introduced to the big time, a First Division match against Sunderland. This time we had to queue up at the turnstiles and pay one shilling and ninepence to enter (eight pence in today’s cur­rency). There were 33,000 watching, which although only half full, seemed massive and a little intimidating to us at first. As I recall it, there were no women present and everyone was dressed in suits and wearing cloth caps.

This time we were at the North End, almost behind the goal and not far from where we have our current season tickets in the Matthew Harding Stand. The noise was deafening, particularly when Chelsea scored, and the game ended in a 2–1 win. It was near the end of the season and it was only a few games later when Roy Bentley led Chelsea to their first Division 1 Championship, under manager Ted Drake. To two naïve schoolboys it all seemed so easy. Little did we know we would have to wait 50 years for José Mourinho to come along and win another!

The following year we were introduced to what later became another passion, National Hunt racing. Dad rarely bet on horses, preferring to do the football pools, but in 1956 he placed a bet on a horse called ESB to win the Grand National.

We gathered around the kitchen table to listen to the race on our rather crackly radio. I had never heard a race before and was a bit confused by what was going on. The distinctive voice of Peter O’Sullevan guided us through the race and my father got excited at the very first fence when the favourite, Must, fell as did the previous winner Early Mist. Four fences out Devon Loch took the lead and by the time the leaders got to the last couple of fences Eagle Lodge began to tire and ESB began his challenge. At the last fence Devon Loch was only a length clear but quickly went away from ESB. With only 40 yards to go and five lengths clear and the crowd going mad waving their hats in the air for its owner the Queen Mother, Devon Loch suddenly belly-flopped and slid to a halt.

Peter O’Sullevan almost choked on his commentary and we heard a huge collective gasp. I could not understand what was happening, but Dad was visibly excited. When Dave Dick rode ESB past the winning post he became probably the most ignored Grand National winner in history. But he was the toast of our house as Edward Samuel Broughton had just won the Grand National at 100–7. His £2 bet won him £28 which was nearly two weeks wages. There was even a wee dram drunk afterwards which normally only happened at Christmas.

Every year the Christmas tradition was that we would all get together early morning in the chilly living room where there would be three pillowcases laid out on the table containing our presents. One of them would include a board game. Neither Mum nor Viv had any real interest in board games, but Steve and I did, and we played them with Dad. One year it was Monopoly, another it was Cluedo (I seem to recall even Viv played that one) and then one year it was Totopoly. We must have been about twelve at the time, so about three years after ESB’s victory.

Totopoly was fun and interesting but just seemed to lack something. Steve and I felt it had the makings of a good game but was not quite there, so we started looking at the racing pages of the now defunct News Chronicle to get a better understanding of how racing worked. Over the next few years, we developed a highly sophisticated version which finished up bearing no resemblance to Totopoly.

We wrote out racecards, created a list of fictional trainers, jockeys, and horses. If we discovered one of our fictional horses was now a real horse it was immediately retired from racing. We had races for 2-Y-O’s, 3-Y-O’s, and older horses, originally just on the flat and then started some jump racing. We created a large racecourse and ran the races straightforwardly by rolling dice. At the end of each season a whole load of new 2-Y-O’s were invented and some of the older horses retired. We even wrote out newspaper articles giving our tips and writing up reports on the previous days racing. The two of us must have spent hundreds of hours playing our racing game. It was a magical private world.

We first saw a real racehorse when Dad took us to Epsom one August Bank Holiday to see the ‘Amateur Derby’ when we were sixteen. By then we were comparative experts. We knew just about everything there was to know that you could pick up from reading the racing pages daily. I remember we backed the winner of the last race ridden by the Aussie Ron Hutchinson which probably sucked us further in to the sport. Totopoly started a lifetime of interest in racing, but I never imagined I would get to be so involved in the world of horseracing.

Our school performance might have been a bit better had we put the same amount of enthusiasm and dedication into it as we did into racing. Not that we were lazy, we were just not quite so inspired. Westminster City Grammar streamed classes and although Steve and my results were virtually identical, we were not always in the same class. I managed to stay in the ‘A’ stream throughout but on average came about 30th in a class of 33, Steve was usually about one or two places behind me but each year three were relegated. The next year he would be promoted again from the ‘B’ stream and then relegated again. A bit like Sheffield Wed­nesday bouncing around between Division 1 and Division 2 at the time.

A couple of times we swapped classes (under pressure from friends) to see whether the teachers would notice. I think it is unlikely that they would have, but unfortunately our friends were unable to contain their laughter, giving the game away. Our French teacher, ‘Flossie’ Anslow, was convinced we were colluding and doing our homework together as our results were always so close, so for one exam he made us sit as far away from each other as possible. The next day he told the class of his suspicions and expressed his frustration because we both got 52%.

As late teenagers we took part in an Institute of Psychiatry study on identical twins – the study was using both identical and non-identical twins trying to determine which traits were hereditary and which were environmental. It was very interesting but frustratingly they never sent us the results, so we still don’t know the answer.

Later, we attended a special David Frost show where all the audience were identical twins. It was a bit like Noah’s Ark and interestingly about two thirds of the twins dressed identically and the remainder did not. We were part of the remainder so were put to the side as Frost wanted all those dressed alike in the centre for the cameras. I would say that up to puberty we were really two halves of the same person, and it was only after that that we developed our separate identities, but I have never found out if that is the norm for identical twins.

I did what I thought was okay at GCE ‘O’ Levels, but it would be considered pretty dismal these days – I got six passes, but they were all C, D or E grade. No As or Bs. Surprise, surprise, Steve was much the same. Mum and Dad were happy with that outcome – they never put any ‘expectation’ pressure on us. There followed a long discussion with Mum and Dad as to whether we should go on to do ‘A’ Levels or go out to work to bring some much-needed cash into the household. It was agreed we should try for ‘A’ Levels, but University was out of the question.

Our performance was not much different at ‘A’ Level. I got a pass in Maths, failed History (I loved the special project on the French Revo­lution, but the English history teacher was dreadful so that was my excuse) and got lucky in French. In all preceding years you had to pass both the oral and written exams. The year I took it, the examiners decided that if your written work was good enough you could still get an overall pass even if you failed the oral. Guess what? I failed the oral but got an overall pass. How do you fail an oral after studying the language for seven years? I guess never going to France probably contributed, but you must question the examiners logic. What is the use of studying a foreign language if you cannot speak it? Steve matched my performance with two passes – Latin and French (he passed the oral) – and one fail (maths).

I recently discovered my old school reports which were full of words like ‘satisfactory’, ‘works steadily’, ‘weaknesses revealed in examinations’, ‘creditable progress’ none of which gave any hint to the future that awaited.

That future was about to start as six weeks before leaving school, meet­ings were set up with the School Careers Advisory Officer. We had given no thought as to what we might do after leaving school except that by this stage we did not want to do the same thing as each other. We knew our grades would not be good enough for University and, in any case, we could not afford that. A friend of our parents worked