Amazing life of an honest rascal...

PETER BUCKLEY

MARTYN MEETS... Martyn Torr talks to Peter Buckley, a man born to lead and succeed — but who, having seen it, done it, run it and owned it, is happy to be a beach bum.

FOR a man with the world almost literally at his feet, Peter Buckley is a most grounded individual.

Given that he is probably the wealthiest man who has ever made me a coffee — he actually apologised because he only had instant — you could argue that he can afford to take a sanguine look at life from his home in the mountains of Andorra where he has lived for the past 15 years.

Or does he...?

Peter, now 70, though you would hardly guess it, also has properties in Pollenca on Majorca’s rugged and beautiful northern coast and a £3 million apartment overlooking the spectacular harbour in Barcelona.

Oh, and the lodge at Hollyville in Greenfield, although this is on the market.

“Well, I’m spending only three days a year in England now so it’s silly really to keep it on, especially as I will probably spend even less time here in the future,” this self-made Chaddy lad told me during a fascinating two hours in his company.

“I’ve still got the golf course here but it’s always so cold and wet so I never get to play it,” he confided.

He has family in South Manchester and London so will continue to return to his roots...but his residential days in the borough of his birth are clearly numbered.

Talking to the man whom many people will remember as the industrialist behind the resurgence of Slumberland, there isn’t a great deal to keep him in Greenfield.

The old Hollyville is now 18 apartments — “Can you believe I used to live in a house that now has 18 other homes in it?” — and the smaller property on the drive, for many years the showhouse for Slumberland Beds, has also been sold.

Which leaves the lodge, a quite beautiful property in its own right, the last of the estate built originally by George Dew and lovingly restored by Peter to its former glory.

So how did all this happen for a guy who was born into a working-class family in Chadderton and who is, undoubtedly, one of the most successful industrialists this country, let alone Oldham, has ever produced?

The story begins when he left school at 15 and took as job as an apprentice engineer at Mather and Platt in Newton Heath. Out of necessity — as I could fill an entire edition of the Chronicle with his business life — this section will be condensed but I will try to do justice to his awesome success.

For it is truly incredible, taking in business around the globe including a time when he was the first man on the planet to wholly own a manufacturing plant in China — unheard of in the days when the entire population of that vast and enigmatic country wore denim caps and visitors were locked in their hotel rooms until escorted to meetings.

His list of successes is far too numerous to catalogue, but basically he is an engineer trained in the best traditions of British industry who sprang to prominence at Mather and Platt by initially leading a strike and then, averting one.

The latter of these two achievements won him a two-week reward from the directors, a management training course at Manchester University where he sat among people from the Marks and Spencer family dynasty.

Tired of being poor, he and his wife Ann took on an off-licence in Fir Lane, Royton, and this allowed the young Peter to save the magnificent sum of £5,000.

Now working for Harrison and Jones Ltd, at the Bee Mill in Royton, he learned the rudiments of the foam industry which was to make him his fortune.

With Brian Whittaker and Doug Campbell, two men he met at Harrison and Jones, and using the money he had earned in the off-licence he set up Plastikos in an old mill in Haworth.

Before too long he was seen as a threat by some of the big players in the industry but with typical bravado — and being fully aware of his own abilities — he called their bluff, turned the tables and the lad who studied at night school was soon the youngest chairman, at 34, of a plc in the country.

From here on Peter enjoyed his most acquisitive and successful years, including Europe’s largest caravan maker and, eventually, Slumberland Beds. All of these companies had one thing I common — they all needed foam.

“I couldn’t really afford to buy Slumberland, but I could see the sense of the deal and we made it work,” he recalls. Oh, and along the way he also bought and sold, at vast profit, Bensons Beds.

Once again his by-now legendary negotiating skills came to the fore. He was increasingly aware of his own skills and abilities and when the principals tried to ease him sideways he once more called their bluff and threatened to give away his shares and walk away.

History tells us that never happened and as Peter looks back on a career that took his industrial plants as far apart as China, Eastern Europe, Florida and Hawaii, to name but a few, he can reflect on a job well done.

Property is now his forte and successful forays into estate in Southern France and Majorca have enhanced his reputation, and wealth, although he was reticient to talk about his success save the of mention of his investments.

These include a 50-bed hotel in Pollenca and, it seems to me, most of the high street in Andorra, where he also owns a mountain bar, among others and a host of ski shops.

Seven years ago his life was turned upside down when his wife and lifelong partner Ann sought a divorce. “The shock literally killed me and I had to be brought back to life by the paddles,” he recalls.

But this man who described himself as “an honest rascal” is once again living life to the full, albeit outside Oldham.

He has has returned to such rude health he has even walked to the North Pole with two intrepid Scandanavian soldiers in tow.

As he prepared to leave the town of his birth, possibly for the last time, he told me that he allowed only three journalists to interview him, so I felt privileged to have spent time with a man who happily admits to being a “beach bum and a gyspy”.