(music) Entrepreneur Monday’s Boring Objects LMBYTS #1369 9th June 2025

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. What else? I don't know.

What do I normally say? I'm sure I say something. Oh, itchy. I've got an itchy side.

Hello Vinnie. So this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Monday's boring objects.

Ssss. What could I talk about today? Have you not prepared? No, I haven't. Why not? You should be prepared.

Are you not a professional? No. Call yourself a professional? No. What are you then? I don't know.

You should know what you're doing. No, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just plodding along, hoping that I don't fall in a hole, basically.

So Monday's boring objects. I'm going to talk about something that I've never talked about before. It's a part of my life that I don't think I've ever even mentioned.

Which may surprise you that I've done over 1300 recordings and how could I have not mentioned? How can it be at least one thing that I've not mentioned? Because I've not exactly had an interest in life. So but there is one thing I was thinking about this earlier when I was on the toilet. I don't know what why I thought about it then.

But there's something that I wanted to be. So this is what the subject is going to be then. But I'll be talking about myself.

But the subject is entrepreneurship. That's the subject. That's the boring subject for today's Monday's boring object.

So entrepreneurship or entrepreneurs. Right from an early, quite an early age, I wanted to be successful in some kind of business. Clearly, it never happened.

But I kind of, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the idea of working for myself. I saw my dad, he was self employed.

So he had a successful business. And I used to like watching Del Boy on Only Fools and Horses, the ducking and diving and Arthur Daly ducking and diving. And I wasn't so big on the con aspect of that.

You know, selling people cars that didn't have any brakes. That wasn't, you know, not really my style. But it made for a comedy show.

So when I was in my, I think my first delve into any kind of entrepreneurship, money making outside of working for someone else was probably when I was about 13. So yeah, I'm just trying, I'm trying to delve back to see. Probably 13.

Yeah. So one of the things, so I started working, I think when I was 12, part time. I think 12 was the that was the minimum age to do a paper round.

I think might have been 11. But I think it was 12. I think and so I get a little bit muddled up because I had so many different paper rounds.

I had a morning paper round. I had a different times I had an evening paper round. I had a monthly delivering leaflets.

And there was a fortnightly delivering these pamphlet things. And I also worked in the bakery. Well, as well as also worked in the washing dishes in this restaurant, and then I worked in a bakery, or the bakehouse, they called it.

So start off working in the evenings, just washing up, which is a cool job, actually, it was all right. So that was very busy, but it was okay. And I've worked during the day sometimes on a Saturday and I think it was something like 75 pence an hour, which may not seem a lot.

But when I was 21, or 22, literally 10 years later, I still was only getting about two pound an hour. You know, so it was pretty, you know, I was probably better off then than I was when I left school. So financially, I mean, but then I didn't have to pay rent or buy food.

So I guess it was, it was a little bit different. So forgetting the jobs I had, there was I don't know what it was, but I started to think, hmm, what can I do to earn some money? I don't know why I wanted to earn money. Because I knew I could do a paper round and I could, I could get money.

It wasn't a lot, but it was still, you know, it was still okay. And I had multiple jobs going at the same times, at times. Why? I don't know why.

But yeah, I just this, this feeling, this need to do something to, I don't know, make something of myself kind of to be successful. It never happened, but you know, I kind of really was, I was going for it. So I'm not sure which order it happened, but I'll focus on what I did at school first.

And then I'll talk about what I did outside of school when I was still at school, but what I did on the outside. And then I'll move into what I did once I left school. So, so this is how I work this out in my brain.

Okay. I categorize things. So I've broken it up into periods.

So it's the period before I left school. Those couple of years, three years or whatever, before I left school. And then there's periods when I was working at the chip shop.

And when I left the chip shop, so that's a little period on its own. Can you hear that plane? Then there's another period, you know, so I've broken up into periods. So the period before leaving school is then broken up into different periods.

There's the period, it's the things I did at school and the things I did outside of school. And then I break it in again, into those things that, like at school, those things that I was getting money for, and those things that I was owed money for. So at school, there's a few trends.

And one thing I realized is people kept running out of pens. So I bought a bunch of pens and I would sell them. And I made a profit, but it was just, it was never going to buy me my new jet, you know.

So that was a little bit boring. I was walking around. I could walk to school with like a whole satchel full of pens and come home and made like maybe 50 pence profit.

It really wasn't worth it. And then, but unfortunately, the pens were rubbish as well. So that didn't really last.

There was a reason they were so cheap. And then there was another trend. I mean, pens weren't a trend, but there was a couple of trends that I kind of jumped on.

One was gobstoppers. Gobstoppers became really, really, really popular. And if you don't know what a gobstopper is, basically, it just, it's called a gobstopper because you can't talk when it's in your mouth, it's so big.

And it's like a, like a big ball. And eventually, when you suck the ball for long enough, it is got maybe different tastes and stuff. And probably a little bit like, what's his name? Willy Wonka.

It wasn't, they had a gobstopper, didn't they? There was different flavours of dinner and stuff. Anyway, in the end, in the middle, right, right, the middle, there'd be like chewing gum, but it would take ages to get through it. And the teachers would confiscate it.

They'd make you spit it out if you had one in your mouth, and they saw it, which made it more attractive to the pupils. You know, it was like a challenge to be able to get away with spending the whole lesson, 45 minutes with that, you know, something in your mouth. But what happened is people, I think what happened, do you hear that? Do you hear that?

I don't know if you can hear that in the garden.

That distracted me. All right. So what it was is I noticed that when, when one kid had something, all the other kids seemed to want it, mainly the boys, to be fair.

If one had it, others wanted it. But they couldn't have it because, you know, they didn't sell gobstoppers. The teacher didn't have a supply to sell to us.

I probably would have gone against education standards, possibly. But then I thought, because I saw I had a friend who wanted, who had one, and I said, can I have one? He said, yeah. And he said, it'd be a pound.

And I think they cost like 40 pence, 50 pence to buy, maybe 20 pence to buy, you know, so he's like, okay. And I thought, hmm. So what I did is I bought about 10 of these.

And the sales technique was just to basically walk around sucking. Or be in the classroom. Break time is good because people want stuff.

And it's easier to, you know, exchange money and stuff during the break rather than at class time. So I made a few quid doing that. Another friend of mine was doing the same thing as well, actually.

So it wasn't, I don't think it was really my, wasn't really my invention, really. And then another thing happened where there was this trend where it was chucking coins at a wall. So let's say two people would chuck pound coins or 50 pence pieces against the wall, and whichever one got closest to the wall would win the other person's money.

That's the simplest way to explain it. And sometimes it, yeah, it's, I suppose it's a, it's a similar to bowls. You know, you got to get the closest to the ball, to the white ball, you got to get your bowl.

So you kind of knock the other, the other person's ball out the way. So it's a little bit like that. So you might bounce off the wall, but knock the other person's coin further away from the wall.

And people were losing weight nearly every time someone lost. But then it'd like go double or nothing, double or nothing. And so I saw that people were getting, they wanted to get their money back.

And this is something that was happening every single break time, lunchtime, break, two breaks, and lunchtime, every day for quite a while. I think it got banned in the end. Yeah, yeah, that and the Ouija board that got banned.

And the gangs, they banned the gangs as well. Went through a little phase of having gangs. The Wanderers, the Warriors, the Wongs, just because of the Wanderers movie.

And I started my own gang called the Silver Eagles. Because no one wanted me to be in their gang. So I started my own gang, but I had I had the, it was kind of like a Misfits gang.

And yeah, went a bit wrong. So everything got banned. Because I had people in my gang that were actually acting like a gang.

They didn't, I don't think they realized it was just for fun. Yeah, so it's, so then what I did is I thought people are losing their minds because they haven't got enough money to try and win back. So I started lending money.

Because I had a, I had a couple of part time jobs. So I had, I was, I had some cash. So I started taking like 10, 20 pounds of school with me.

That's probably my life savings to be fair. But I'd, I'd have all in one pound coins. And I started to lend people money.

And I had a book, I kept track of everything. I'd have interest added on. I don't remember what the interest was.

It's a long time ago. And I didn't realize how hard it is to do to be a money lender. Really, it's not an easy job.

And I always thought, you know, you see these, I mean, many movies and TV shows and that I've seen, you know, how money lenders operate. In later years, and I saw like, how they can be quite, quite naughty, you know, when it comes to getting their money back. But after doing it for a little while, I realized that people will make, they'll take the whatever you want to call it, as much as they can, they will avoid paying it.

Sometimes they'll outrightly like say no, not getting it back. And it leaves, you know, once one person does that, then the whole thing's gone. Now, this happened to me, someone decided they weren't going to pay me back.

So I collected and I got a friend to come and he collected it for me. And I dislike the whole situation so much. It wasn't like awful, but it was very much yeah, I stopped it before it got out of hand.

And then that's when I realized this, that life is not for me. You know, a little bit of a little taste of that. It's like no, over like £2.50, you know what I mean? It's like, no, it's really silly.

Because my friend was, my friend was saying, well, give the money, you need to owe the money. It was in the toilet in that school. And this kid was saying, no, you ain't getting nothing.

And he did end up paying. But it just, no, it wasn't, it wasn't, just wasn't for me. It wasn't for him, even my friend, because he's like, no, this isn't really what I want to be doing.

So I think that was a good thing that it taught me that that sort of lifestyle was not for me. I'm a bit, I guess it's the word vanilla, a little bit, little bit peaceful, I think. Just had a bit of an interruption then.

Someone knocked on, no, they didn't knock on the door, they knocked on the phone. They rang on the door. They rang me up.

That's it. Okay, where was I talking about? What was I talking about? When? Earlier? But what was it? It was something. Pens, gobstoppers, coins against the wall, money lending, didn't go really to plan.

Change of mind with that stuff. And I think that was the end of my entrepreneurial career at school. That was it for the school thing.

Outside of school, I had three different businesses that I started. And by businesses, I mean, I put postcards in the local shop window. That's what I mean by businesses with the my telephone number, my home telephone number.

The first one, it was three different ones. There was one for car cleaning. There was one for Wait a minute, what was it? Car cleaning, dog walking.

And there was another one for looking after kids, babysitting. Now, I used to babysit my little brother. So I kind of knew my way around being a babysitter.

So I thought, Oh, may I do this, maybe make some money out of it. Because I was getting nothing for looking after my little brother all through the summer and in the evenings and like between school to say evenings between school and like six o'clock I was looking after him. And yeah, I just it was quite easy.

Well, yeah, generally. So I thought maybe I could make some money on that. I didn't get any, I might even put an advert in the local paper as well.

I didn't do any leaflets. I didn't make any leaflets at this point. I don't think I did.

Maybe I did. But I think it was mainly just, if I remember rightly, it was just one newsagent that I put my postcard in the window. Maybe I did it in two.

I'm trying to think of the different places in town. There was definitely one place where I used to have my paper around. Anywhere else in town? Where was there another newsagents? There was one down the seafront.

And there was one on the way to my Nan's house, where I used to live when I was eight. That's the only ones I can remember as far as newsagents go in that town. There probably was others, but not like within where I would go.

Oh no, is that a newsagents? Yeah, there was a newsagents, of course there was, which was not near where I was talking about, but it was near where my dad moved to. And I lived with him for a little while. It was opposite the co-op.

And it was, it was kind of weird because it was it was next to a Laundrette. And then next to the Laundrette was a hairdressers. And opposite that was the co-op.

So it was like there was three shops, well, the Laundrette to three buildings with three commercial businesses. So if you were standing outside the co-op that I worked in, looked across the road on the left hand side was, was it Wadgate Road? Blimey, I don't know if that's, that's come into my mind, it might be the road. So there's this newsagents, quite a spacey shop actually.

And then there was the Laundrette. And then there was on the right hand side, there was the women's, I think it was like hairdressers. Because in them days, you know, so a little while ago, hairdressers would quite often just be for females.

Barbers would be for men. But then some hairdressers would have different sections, one for men, one for women. Not, not, it wasn't so much segregation.

It's just, unless it was. So I went to a hairdressers that had a men's section. And there was a women's section.

Yeah, for some reason. I got to get, yeah, I had my haircut in the women's section once because I had a perm. I know it's a half perm, I was still at school.

So I had a half perm because, because I've got no idea, because I was 15, I guess, 14, 15. Seemed like a good idea. It was weird, really, because I also dyed my hair dark brown.

Now you might think, what's weird about dyeing your hair dark brown and having a half perm? These are two different separate, different separate occasions. Well, firstly, my hair is already dark brown. So that's why that was a bit pointless.

And once my hair got past a certain length, it went curly anyway. I got naturally curly hair. I just I guess it has to get to a certain length before it goes curly, curly.

I'm talking about what, when I used to have a full sexy head of hair. Yeah, the same hairdressers that I got my, I think I did the colouring, I coloured my hair from a box, you know, you know, from the soup, I don't know, hair dye, I guess. So I did that myself, made a mess of it.

And I had a big, yeah, it was a bit weird going to school that day. Because it does, it doesn't just dye your hair. If you leave it, it dyes your skin, temporarily at least.

And so I was going to, I was honestly, I was like, the teacher said, you can't come to school with blackface. So I'm not, you know, because in that in that day, it wasn't it was okay to do that. But it was frowned upon even then.

But I said I'm not, I wouldn't do that stuff is so we'll take it off while you've got makeup on. So it's not, it's dye, I've literally, it dripped down my face. I was told to sit with it for an hour, or whatever to to let it soak in.

So I thought I'd do it for two hours, because it would definitely be done. And then rinse it off. And then but it didn't say anything about my face.

And the teacher said, were you not aware that it was all down your face? I said, yeah, but I didn't, I was focusing on my hair. He said, don't you ever wash your face? I said, that's, yeah, I have done. He said, what do you mean you have done? Do you not wash your face every day? I said, I don't ask you personal questions.

I don't ask you whether or not you flush. So what do you mean whether or not I flush? I said, I don't ask you if you flush your toilet when you've done a poo. I said, well, everyone does.

But I said, so I don't know if I've done if you do. He said, are you just saying this, Jason, to distract the listeners from the fact that you said blackface earlier? I said, no, it's a term that people use. It's not a term I use.

But it's a term that's used for someone that, like, puts a brown paint on their face. And it's, it's, it's not acceptable anymore. It was in the 80s.

He said, we're in the 80s. I said, no, but just getting confusing. You're talking about my listeners in 30, 40 years time.

But we're now in 1984. And things are different now. He said, yeah, I know.

And I said, but that's not what I was doing. It literally, it stained my face. He said, are you sure? I said, you can see it.

Try wiping it off. He said, no, I don't want to touch you. I said, is it because of the health and guidelines and child protection? He said, no, you just look dirty.

You just smell bad. And I don't want to, I don't, you look like you might have fleas. I said, well, you can't say that to me.

You're a teacher. And he said, I'm not a teacher. I said, what do you mean? You're a teacher.

You're here at the school. He said, I'm the janitor. Why would a teacher be cleaning the toilets? I said, oh, I did wonder about that.

Which brings me to the next question. Why are you asking me if I flush? You literally see me flush every day when you see me. Why are you hanging around the toilets anyway? And I said, well, that's what I was thinking about you.

Now I know you're a cleaner. He said, what's your excuse? I said, I don't have one. And I said to him, be honest with me, Mr. Janitor, do you feel you've managed to move away from, you know, what I said earlier? He said, no, I'm not sure.

Do you think maybe everyone's forgotten? I said, I don't know. Because it wasn't used in a derogatory way. It was literally just used in a, to someone thinking I was doing that when I wasn't doing that.

I said, yeah, but it's the term. It's just not a nice term. I said, but I wasn't using that term.

I don't use that term. But that's what the newspapers use. Well, that's what the news uses when a celebrity comes out and does something like that.

I mean, do you remember Ted Danson in the early nineties when he was dating Whoopi Goldberg? He painted, he went to a fancy dress party and painted his face a different colour and he got into a lot of, a lot of trouble. Wow, the Janitor said. How many people listening to this podcast do you think are going to actually remember that Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson used to date?

That's a blast from the past.

How do you remember things like that? Well, more importantly, why do you remember things like that? I said, it's always handy to get me out of trouble. I can use it as an example. Because if someone like Ted Danson, who was, he was a legend.

He is a legend. Star of cheers, been in loads of movies, loads of TV shows. He's a legend.

And he's still a legend now. He still makes good TV shows now, even though he's in his nineties or whatever. And at the time he was dating Whoopi Goldberg, who was also arguably one of the most famous actresses in Hollywood at that time.

Huge star. And she didn't, obviously didn't care that he was putting makeup on. He said, oh, the Janitor said, what do you think about Whoopi Goldberg now then? I said, what do you mean? Well, she seems to come up with quite a lot of criticism ever since doing that View show.

We actually have a TV show based on that in the UK called Angry Women, not angry women. Moaning, not moaning women. Wicked women.

I told you it's got a name. It's been shut down they've took it off air. Moaning, not moaning.

I used to watch it, it was quite good. There's a few presenters on there that I really liked. Women, something women.

And it was kind of a copy of the View. I think the View was first, they might not have been. But anyway, the Janitor was saying, oh, what do you think about Whoopi Goldberg now? I said, well, I thought what you don't realize is, I was a fan of Whoopi Goldberg before she was famous.

He said, no, you wasn't. You weren't a fan of it. I said, yes, I was.

See, Whoopi Goldberg did comedy before she was an actress. And she had a hit stage show on Broadway, which was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I wouldn't say I've seen, I had it on video.

And I also had it on album as well. I still can't remember what it was called. But it was phenomenal.

It was funny. It was insightful, intelligent. She did different characters.

It's a one woman show. Brilliant. And I think she won BAFTAs or whatever, she won loads of awards for it.

And that's what got her into, I guess, into being on TV and being in movies. Because I was such a big stand up fan, and I collected albums and comedy videos. I need to start doing that again, don't I? I need to start collecting, having a comedy collection.

I like collecting things. I like looking at them. So if I had a row of comedy DVDs all along the wall, I'd look at them and think, oh, look at them.

They're all comedy DVDs. I collected them. I spent 10 years collecting them.

And it'd have to be specific. It'd have to be all stand up. And it'd be in groups, so maybe I'll have, maybe that's why I categorize things, memories, in groups, because it's a very librarian kind of way to do things.

Which means maybe I should have been a librarian. That did my, you know, I used to work in this children's charity. And this is when I was a counsellor at the charity as well.

And I couldn't work there anymore, because it was just, the working environment was not very nice. But I still stayed as a counsellor. Part of my job when I was there, for eight months I was there, was to do admin, pretty much just to be on the reception.

That was my job. There's more to it, I'll tell you one day. But it was, it wasn't good, it was not good.

But one of my roles was to to organize the files by alphabetical order. Okay, so I left in 2011 August. I went back probably about 2016, maybe 2017, maybe 2018.

It was around that time, it was quite a few years later, looking at maybe doing some voluntary work there. Because I did voluntary work before, and I liked being a volunteer, just didn't like working for them. Because if you volunteer, people can't, I mean they might try, but they can't be rootier.

You know, they can't, they just like, they have to, I say they have to, but generally volunteers hold all the cards really. You know, so a manager, a supervisor, they got no choice but to really be gentle and respectful. I'm not saying that's always the case, but you know, in my experience that seemed to be the case.

And that's what it was when I was as a volunteer there. As soon as I started working there, wow, I was treated very differently. It was stark opposite, it's amazing, considering it was a charity for children.

So anyway, I thought, maybe I'll go and volunteer again. I was looking for some volunteer places, get me out, you know, just to do something. And so I go into this building, just out of interest, like half hoping that the manager would have gone, moved on, got a different job, you know, hopefully she wasn't there anymore.

But she was there, unfortunately. But it was worth a try. So I went in there.

I'm talking to a man I've never met before, he was in charge of the volunteers. So he was saying, we might have some volunteer work. And then in through the door comes, not the manager, she did turn up later on.

But a lady that I used to work with that was in the counselling office, I used to get on really well with her. She came in, she was the one that would give me, tell me what I need to do with the client files and the alphabetical stuff, you know, where to put it and stuff. She came in telling me that I had completely ruined everything and put everything into the files in the wrong alphabet, you know, unalphabetically.

And all it was is by surname. So you know, it's like, and I said, what are you talking about? Yeah, yeah, you messed it all up. She made it a complete nightmare.

Because every seven years, I think it was, they had to go through all the files and get rid of anything that was over seven years old. So they were going, they were now in that process again, having, and I was going through that process when I was working there. So it was the next turn to do that.

And she was saying, you've made such a mess. Everything's in the wrong order in under wrong alphabet and stuff. I said, first of all, hi, how are you? Yeah, maybe say hello first.

So they're just moaning at me. Desperate women, wicked women. What was it called? I can't remember.

And I said, Are you sure that it was me and not one of the many, many, many people that have come and gone in the last seven years? I mean, come on. How can you bear it in mind that the files at the time, this seven years worth of files would have been put in there? Okay. How can, but I'm the one to blame for the whole thing.

It's like, wow. And I was amazed. It's like, really? And the one thing I can do, I can alphabet to lies.

This is that makes sense. I know, I might have to do it in my head or do it on my fingers to figure out what comes before. But I know A comes first.

I know Zed's at the end somewhere. And M and N, O, they're kind of in the middle-ish. You know, I might have to work it out.

But I know that the F is after B. Just things like that, you know. I don't need a chart on the wall for me to look at it. But I know the alphabet.

I can't do it backwards. There's a lot of things I can't do backwards. I can't do a wee-wee backwards.

You know, why would I want to do one? I can walk backwards, but I will bang into things. Did you know, did I ever tell you the only time I ever, ever had a black eye in my whole life was when I was walking home from school? This, this kid. So I'm like shouting at this kid.

And he's looking at me and he bangs into a lamppost because he's distracted by me. And I'm laughing my head off and I turn around and I bang into a lamppost. Now, back in them days, the lampposts were concrete.

They weren't like metal like they are now. Not saying that banging into a metal lamppost wouldn't be problematic. But these were solid concrete lampposts.

And my eye just started. I was so proud of my black eye, my shiner. Really, really loved it.

Don't know why it's called a shiner, but I loved it. It's, and it was like really my whole eyebrow was like, so proud. And I was like walking around like I'd just been in a big fight.

And I was a big man. I was probably about 12, 13 or whatever at the time. It's like, yeah.

But unfortunately, my friend was just going around telling everyone. Yeah, he walked into a lamppost. He'd already told everyone before I got to school the next day.

So I'm walking around like the big I am. And everyone already knew. So people were saying, what happened to you? Are you okay? I said, oh, you should see the other person.

And I said that a few times, eventually someone said, well, the lamppost, lamppost looked fine this morning. Still standing up. Oh, how do you know? Dean told everyone.

Really? Said, yeah, we didn't tell everyone, but everyone just spread it around. Because he said that you're going to brag about being in a fight and how you beat up 10 people. And you know, so why you got a black eye? Because one of them got lucky.

I said, okay, I walked into a lamppost. What's wrong with that? It's funny. But it's not hugely glamorous, is it? Yeah.

That's the only time. I've been bruised. I've had bruises and stuff, but I've never actually had a proper, full, proper shiner.

The only time in my life I've ever got one of them. So yeah, I had my hair dark brown, half a perm. I never really understood what half a perm was.

But I was intrigued. Very intrigued. I didn't know if it was gonna half my hair was gonna be permed and the other half would just be left.

See, I didn't realize when I was between the ages of 20 and 24, some summer 20, well, 1994, I grew my hair long. So I had long hair all the way down to the middle of my back for years. But because my hair's so curly, it was almost impossible to manage.

I'd have it in a ponytail most of the time. I didn't know that it was possible to straighten the hair. I could have straightened it.

It could have been lovely. I could have still, well, I wouldn't still have it because I imagine my hair would have fallen out much quicker if I'd have kept the ponytail because it really pulls on the roots, doesn't it? So I did think about growing my hair long just for the for a laugh really, just to see what it would look like now being a bit mildly, slightly marginally bald, how it would work out.

But I just never got around to it because for some reason, the longer my hair gets, the balder I look, which is weird because the sides get very curly.

So I've got very thick curly hair at the back, at the sides, not so much at the front. It's kind of like looking down on a forest. You know when you look down a forest and there's like really thick forest and you get an opening and on one side there's the like bits of opening and that's like the front of my hair and on the crown of my head, it's like a lake.

That's just like an opening completely. That's kind of what the top of my head looks like. Yeah, I don't know if that's a good visual.

I did have my hair bleached in 1988. So I wanted to be like Bross. So I had my hair bleached, both my ears pierced.

I got a lot of attention. I wanted a lot of attention and I was getting it. But not from women.

I couldn't understand it. I was with my friend and we were going in and it's like, I said, why all these men are chatting me up? What's going on? And it turned out he was in a gay bar. I didn't know.

I didn't know there was a gay bar in town. And the reason I liked it in there because it was friendly. And it wasn't like a gay nightclub.

It was just a bar. But it was run by a gay bloke and the atmosphere in there was really nice. Really nice.

There was no arguments. There's no, no, it was just really nice. So I go in there because some people I knew went in there and we just have a chat and it was bright and it was lovely.

I didn't know it was a gay club or a gay bar. Because back then it wasn't official in a sense. It wasn't like an official gay bar.

It was just a bar run for, I guess, for his people that he knew and for people to feel comfortable going there. And that's one of the thing about, I didn't know I was going to talk about gay bars, but I've been in lots of gay nightclubs over the years when I was younger. The one thing, the two things I noticed.

One thing I liked and one thing I didn't like. I liked the atmosphere. Such a good atmosphere.

Never ever seen trouble in a gay bar or gay club. I'm not saying that it never happened but I never saw it. And, you know, in London you go anywhere, you know, I mean, there's usually something happens during the night.

Nothing, nothing happened ever when I was out. And they're probably all too busy checking me out. And then the thing I didn't, wasn't so impressed with, and I don't know why this is, and I've been in quite a few nightclubs during that period.

Every single gay club or gay nightclub I went to, there's no lights in the toilets. I couldn't figure it out. Like, how am I supposed to know where, I remember saying, how am I supposed to know where everything is? And you just follow the sounds, follow the noises.

It's like, does anyone know where the cubicle is? Like, it's over here. Like, okay. I'll lead you there.

Like, no, it's okay. No, I don't need you to hold my hand. Oh, you've got lovely hands.

Okay. But it's, yeah, I remember, yeah, I remember I got a girlfriend from a gay bar once. It was brilliant.

Because it's that whole, you can't pick up women in a gay bar, is it? Like, actually, I think women were there the same reason I was there, because it was a nice atmosphere. It was safe, unthreatening. It was nice, just lovely place.

So I used to meet women. Well, I met one particular female, and I'm sure she was there for exactly the same reason. And we got on and we ended up dating.

And we had a lot in common, you know, just chilled out, didn't really want all that. The hassle, you know, it's quite nice to just, she didn't want to be somewhere where she's going to be hit on all the time. And I quite like being somewhere where I was being hit on all the time.

You know, and we ended up going out and yeah, I remember she, what was it? We couldn't go out. We kind of, to be, we had the first night together on that night. But we did arrange to meet each other the next day.

And she phoned me and said, oh, she couldn't meet me until later on in the day, because she had to get a prostate exam. So I thought, okay, well, we'll meet up later on. And it was good.

It was a nice romantic time. Yeah. So one of the things I my next delve into entrepreneurship was probably when I was at the chip shop.

Because Oh, yeah, I did get a couple of phone calls for the child minding service, or babysitting service. And they all said the same thing. Are you a boy? It's like, okay, weird question.

I said, Yeah. All right, never mind. Bye.

It's like, in the end, after a few of these calls, I said, Wait a minute, what's the problem? I'm not leaving my kid with a boy. We figured that you were, if you're offering a babysitting service that you'd be female. I said, What difference does it make? I said, I babysit my little brother all the time.

And ironically, I didn't say this to the person, because I couldn't really predict the future to him. But I would have said to him, what I want to say to you is, I had multiple people asked me to babysit their kids as I got older. Because, you know, when I was in a chip shop, there was 123, three different people asked me to babysit for them.

And they pay me, they give me five quid or whatever. And it meant that they could go out for a meal, they could go out and do something. And I just turned up when they were already in bed.

So I just go watch TV, watch a big, big colour TV and stuff. It was easy, just sit in there. For a few hours, they'd come back and I'd go home, or they'd give me a lift home if, if I, you know, was, if they weren't drunk.

So I did it a few times. And I did it again. When I worked in the co-op, I looked after my friend's kids used to babysit.

I think that was it. But now I also, I was actually a childminder. For probably about four months, five months, when I was 18.

I actually lived in like a living nanny. But all my, my only job really was just to take her to school. The rest of the time, I'd just be, I'd be in the flat while she was in bed.

So I'd have to make sure that she was safe and she'd be asleep anyway. And they'd be doing a night shift. So I did that for a while.

And then I'd take her, yeah, I'd take her to school in the morning. That's it. And that was it.

Didn't, I'm not sure, maybe, no, I didn't pick her up from school. I think the, the, the mother picked her up from school because she was up by then. So she'd be in bed by seven.

And then she'd be up again, probably by two, two or three, two, probably. The school was only around the corner. But I couldn't really use that as a, as a defense.

When I was a kid saying to this person on the phone, what difference does it make for my boy or a girl? Just, I didn't really get it, to be honest. I didn't understand. I didn't see what the difference would be.

But yeah, I didn't get any work anyway. And then when I was at the chip shop, it got, it got a bit silly because I had literally, I was selling my furniture just so I could get by because my dad had all my furniture in storage from my bedroom. So when I got that flat, he moved in, you know, as far as the furniture goes, probably the TV.

I'm thinking about it. I probably did get the TV. So it was in storage.

I was wondering the other day what happened to that TV. I got my bed, I got my wardrobe, bed, wardrobe. There probably wasn't much more probably, maybe a chair.

That was about it. Really. There wasn't like a lot of things.

I didn't have like huge amounts of belongings. I wonder where everything went. Must have had some stuff.

Because it was in storage downstairs in the garage where at my stepnan's place. I mean, all my weights and my punch bags and all that stuff I sold before I even moved into the flat above the chip shop. So I didn't have any of that stuff anymore.

So I wasn't able to use that. What's the point in having it if I can't use it? Because at the time, I didn't know I was ever gonna find anywhere else to live. Yeah.

So I got to the point where I was sleeping on the floor on a mattress in the living room and didn't really have any belongings. So I started to, what can I do? So I started to be a bit of a wheeler dealer. And I knew some people that had stuff to sell or stuff for me to buy to sell.

And sometimes they'd let me have it and I'd pay them once I got the money from the person I was selling it to, which is quite a good deal for me because I didn't have any sort of cash to play with. So I did that for a bit, sold a few little bits and bobs, sold a fridge freezer. That was probably my biggest sale.

I think I made about £45 for that, which was pretty much double what I was getting a week in my pocket. So that was quite a nice bit of money. What else? Then I got, what I started doing, I met a jeweler who was one of the customers and he was telling me that there was money in jewellery.

And I think he was kind of retired. He had a jewellery store, retired, and he'd been in London or something, but he still kind of did a little bit on the side, you know? So I talked to him and I was like, oh, sometimes he showed me catalogues. I'd be sitting on his lap and he'd be showing me catalogues and bits of the jewellery.

The markup price is for that. So you can spend £100 on something and sell it for maybe £350, £400, because the more something costs, the more valuable it feels to the person buying it. But the markup is really high and I thought, oh.

So I kind of looked into it and again, this man, he said he could sell me stuff. So he gave me a catalogue. Again, I would buy the stuff, I would sell it and then he would provide me with that and I would get the money for him.

So that's kind of, I would order from him and sell it to people. Now, I sold a couple of rings, but it didn't really go very far. There's only so much you can do when you work in a chip shop, because it was quite hard for me to present myself as successful to the people on the other side of the counter, the customers.

Successful enough to depart with their money for jewellery. When I stunk of fish, and I was wearing just dirty, well not dirty, but clothes that were just horrible and I, yeah, I didn't, I didn't really, I didn't fit the part. I got a couple of sales, but you know, it didn't work great.

It was something, so I kind of made a little bit of money. My friend came around once with some, a big black bag full of cigarettes and that was, he had a friend who had a friend and we were going to sell them in the pubs. So I stored them.

This is before I moved into the flat, so this is a long time ago, before I moved into the flat above the chip shop. So this is like 40, wow, 40 years ago. And so we're all ready to go out that night and, you know, go into the pubs and just, so I couldn't even get served in the pubs.

I was what, 15 at the time. So let's go around and, sell these cigarettes to people. And he came around, I thought, all right, let's get ready to go.

And he said, no, there's a problem. I said, what? He showed me the newspaper and what he didn't know where the cigarettes had come from. So we spent the rest of the evening disposing of them because, you know, it was dodgy.

It's like, I can't believe it. I really, I didn't mind being a wheeler. I was trying to be a wheeler dealer, but I wasn't trying to be a criminal.

I'm a criminal. See, yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't great. I mean, ideally I would have just sort of, it wasn't a hundred percent sure it was from there, but it just seemed a little bit of a coincidence.

No one sort of knew, no one, well, no one that did know would tell, which is probably the right thing anyway. But so we're walking around disposing of them for hours, literally taking them out of the packets and breaking them up one by one. There must have been, there was a lot, a lot, there's yeah, a lot, a lot of money's worth actually.

In today's money, that'd be worth probably a couple of thousand pounds worth of cigarettes now, because about 20 pound a packet now. So, do you know, there's at least a hundred packs probably, maybe even more than that. So yeah, it's, after that I didn't, I thought, no, I don't think I'm going to, I'm not going to sell contraband, not contraband, but I just, the idea of, I didn't want to sell stolen goods.

I mean, it might not have been, but I didn't want to do that anyway, because I was in such a small town, you couldn't get away with it. And when I moved to London, I was buying stuff all the time that was snide or dodgy, stuff that'd come in on the boats. I don't mean I wasn't buying immigrants, I wasn't buying illegals.

No, there was like, you know, tapes that were, what do you call them? Like copies of stuff, snide, I suppose that's what they're called. I forget what they call them. But yeah, so that was the end of that criminal empire.

Just wasn't for me. And then I traveled to London to the main place where they sell jewelry. And this is probably a couple of years later, probably about 1989.

I went to London and I bought, I probably spent about £100 on jewelry, brought it back, trying to sell it. And I was even walking through the train, trying to sell it to people on the train. What was going on in my mind? I didn't sell anything.

But I don't know where I got the the confidence, should we say? Maybe stupidity, but confidence. Where did I get that from? To be able to walk up to complete strangers on a train that was sitting there and try and sell them jewelry out of a carrier bag. It didn't even, there's no, I don't think they even had boxes, which is a bit silly.

Like, yeah, in the end, I'm not sure. I think I did sell some. But I think I didn't sell many.

I did sell some, not on the train, but afterwards, I might have given a few away. But another thing I did is I bought the Exchange and Mart, which is a magazine and very famous for, it was very famous, I'm not sure if it's still around. It might be a website now.

But people used to sell their cars on there. Buy and selling cars. They also had buying and selling number plates was a very, that was a very kind of specialized thing.

But there's also a business section, where you could phone up or send off for a business kit, absolutely free. And it'd be about a free business idea. You go along and they just send it to you in a post.

And you'd give it a go and see if you could, you know, do that. And I did that for every single business opportunity there was. And I remember, I came downstairs one morning, and I had about 45.

It was a brilliant day. I had about 45 packages, or envelopes with stuff in with all these different things. It's different, you know, because I was just giving stuff away free, trying to get people to sell it, like samples and stuff.

It was so good. There was financial plans, there was even money lending, which perhaps wasn't a good thing to me to get involved in again. But the one thing I did take up, I did sort of delve into the jewellery, tried to start a business as a jeweller, kind of in person.

I had this idea that I'd be, I'd call myself Mr. Gold. And I'd travel, I'd go around the pubs, and I'd wear lots of jewellery in a suit. And everyone would come to me for their jewellery requirements.

And I'd just be known in a local town. And that would be, if someone got engaged, they'd come to me, because I would get them a reduced rate than what they would get in jewellers. But it would still be the same quality.

Didn't quite work out. That was the plan. And so I had leaflets made up and you know, all this stuff done.

And yeah, I had necklaces and yeah, it didn't quite work. The next thing I tried was perfume. Now this company, I still feel a little bit giddy thinking about it because it was exciting.

They sent me a whole pack of perfumes, a big sample pack, like big, you know, would go through the letterbox. I mean, you might argue, well, just because it wouldn't go through the letterbox doesn't mean it's doesn't mean it's like big. But it was big.

It was kind of like suits. I don't know. Not suitcase size.

But briefcase size, maybe maybe a smaller briefcase. And the samples were nice. Really nice.

And they'd be it was so I felt professional. So what I did, I started going around to people I knew. And it'd be almost like an Ann Summers party, but with perfume.

But without any laughter, or people. So I guess there's nothing like an Ann Summers party. But I knew a few people, a few females, and I just like try that.

Because back in them days, perfume, you know, it's, it's not see things were different. There wasn't a lot of is it cologne that men wear? Which is basically just perfume, isn't it? So there wasn't a lot of really kind of men perfume. Like there is now.

Not that I don't wear cologne. I just like I like old fashioned BO. I think that's perfect.

Oh, I thought you were coming. I could smell you from a block off, block off, block away, block away, a mile away. So I don't have BO.

It's weird, though, because I've known a few people like really, really bad BO in it. And I don't know, I was sitting there, I was sitting there, working in the place and the person's I wasn't far from their armpit. It just the work environment meant that.

Perhaps I need to explain that. But then I could smell them. And I was also near the microwave.

And the microwave was heating up a pie. And it was weird because I was kind of getting a little bit of a similar smell from both his heart, his armpit, and the microwave. And they're almost like they were mixing together.

Really like having a little dance in the air. The two smells were, I don't know if it's symbiotic, whatever, like a little symbiotic bouncing on a symbiotic trampoline. I don't know.

But I was like, Oh, that's weird. And I started to think, is the pie smelling like his armpits? Or is the armpit smelling like that pie? I didn't know what kind of pie it was, because I wasn't the one heating the pie up. So, and the pies all had different bottoms of like tinfoil, obviously don't put the tinfoil in the microwave.

But they all had different. So I'm standing there thinking, was I sitting down? Sometimes I sit down when I want to enjoy a smell and try and figure out what the substances, especially if there's two different smells. Sometimes I need to rest my legs.

On this occasion, I think I was just standing. Yeah, because he was very tall. That's why I was able to get to the arm, not get to the armpits.

But that's why the armpits are a little bit closer to me. And I didn't actually have my nose in his armpit. That would have been inappropriate to do that when there was customers around.

But the microwave was also to the right of me, he was to the left of me. Because we was in a like a food environment. I thought, I wonder what kind of pie is then? Is it a chicken pie? Pie? Is it a vegetable pie? I don't know why I'm squeaking when I say the word pie, pie.

But they had different metal covers, like or not covers, but holders. So the chicken ones were yellow. The I think the steak ones were oblong with purple bombs, purple aluminium or aluminum.

Aluminium is the correct way to say that. But the bottom of the one with silver aluminium, which meant it was a beef and onion pie. And I thought to myself, beef and onion, beef and onion.

But I didn't realise I was saying it out loud. The customers will look at me a bit weird. The person I was working with was like talking about and but then when a customer shouted out, no, he's talking about my pie.

It's in a microwave. It sounds smells like it's ready. And hasn't hasn't pinged yet.

But I'm not that I'm timing it. But I reckon it's probably ready because I can smell it. I said, Are you sure though? Is it sure that's what you can smell? And he said, What else could I be able to smell other than the beef and pie? And I said, Maybe and I thought, No, I can't just say his armpits, can I? Because that would be I don't know.

I don't think it'd go down too well. I guess that's something you need to discuss with the person first, isn't it? Like, it could be an awkward conversation. So you're right, Tony.

Yeah, you're right. Before we start our shift today, tonight, I was just wondering if I can ask you something. Yeah, what is it? Well, just want to know just in case I have to heat up a beef and onion pie in a microwave.

And a customer asks, Is there a beef and onion pie being heated up? Or maybe I haven't heated a beef and onion pie up. And if a customer asks, Is a beef and onion pie being heated up? And if there isn't a beef and onion pie being heated up, is it okay if I tell them that it's your armpits that they're smelling? It's weird to sort of bring that into a conversation, isn't it?

Especially when you've been talking about Star Trek. So I was thinking, they overlap, there's an overlapping smell.

It intrigued me. I didn't realize but it seems to still be intriguing me for a weird way. For some reason, my phone keeps turning off.

I don't trust that phone. And then I started thinking, beef and onion pie, body odour, what they both got in common other than the smell, BO, beef and onion, BO, body odour, BO. So I started thinking, is that why they call beef and onion pies, beef and onion pies, because they smell like BO.

And I thought, no, that doesn't make sense. Maybe that's why they call BO, BO, because it smells like a beef and onion pie. Again, I thought, perhaps I should ask him.

But that didn't seem like how, when is a good time, I suppose, directly after asking if it's okay to point at his armpits. If a customer thinks they're smelling a beef and onion pie being heated up, that would be probably the ideal entry into that part of the conversation. Yeah.

And so I delved in jewellery. And so that was that was okay. The perfume, that's it, perfume.

I did sell a little bit of perfume, not a lot, a little bit. But not a lot. And I just thought, so that didn't really work.

But I, I loved the whole planning, not the doing, but the dreaming. Not the doing, but the thinking about it, the the idea of being an entrepreneur. It really appealed to me.

And getting all these new things through the post about, you know, how to sell registration numbers and all things like that. But ultimately, never really made any, any money. I was probably at a loss with the amount of money I paid out over the years with that.

You know, not that I paid out a lot, but I didn't have a lot come in either. So that that's my entrepreneurial period. I think it kind of came to an end by the time I was by the time I was 19.

I'd kind of kind of given up on that. I just didn't really pursue it anymore. But for a good five years, was that 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, maybe six years, I was really pursuing options, looking at ways to maybe make some money as an entrepreneur.

I also tried this when I think I was 18. I was going to sell water, water filters as a self employed basis. But that didn't really work because I didn't have a car.

And to carry around water filters is just Yeah, it was a big old suitcase. And I thought, oh, so that didn't work. Plus, I think they wanted money from me.

They wanted me to put down a deposit on or to pay for the first water filter that I was going to use as a demonstration, because they wouldn't be able to use it again. They wouldn't be able to sell it on. So I think they wanted me to pay them that.

And I said, Okay. And then I didn't speak to them again. I just like left it like and it probably wasn't a lot of money, but probably more than I had.

Anyway. Perhaps that was their stick is that was their way of selling water filters. By employing people on a self employed basis, it didn't cost them anything.

And then it's sell a water filter to them. Wonder how many interviews he did a week, how many jobs he gave away a week. So that was pretty much the that was that period.

There was I think what I would like to do. Oh, yeah, I did become a window cleaner. And it's not so much.

I mean, it's, it's entrepreneurial, isn't it? It's self employed. I became a window cleaner and I cleaned one window, I think it was my landlord's my landlady's windows. And then I left the ladder and all my equipment in her garage.

Then I moved to Spain, decided to move to Spain came back the same day after going to Spain for the afternoon. And she evicted me and she wouldn't give me the home give me the ladder back. So that's that's the end of Monday's boring objects.

Talking about being an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial ship, being an entrepreneur, I don't know what I'm going to call it. I can't even spell the word. I literally can't say either.

Can I? So we'll see, see how this all comes out. But that's it for me. So thank you for listening.

Remember to be kind to yourself because you do deserve to be happy. And be gentle with yourself because you deserve to feel safe. Lots of love.

Bye