David Gold - Flying
Alchemy Part Three
ame David's landlord and told him that there was a redevelopment clause in his lease, and he was given six months' notice. "I should have had the lease checked by a solicitor," David told me, "because I got out after the six months, and the shop is still there to this day. All the landlord did was let it to a bookmaker for loads more money -this was the time when betting shops were first allowed to open.
"Bad luck? Well, David could have still been there, running one shop and making a comfortable living. As it turned out he was offered another shop by an estate agent, took it, was then offered an even better site and, after some heart-searching, took that as well. Shortly after, he also bought two shops in Tottenham Court Road for £20,000 apiece. Ten years later David was approached by an agent who told him that he had a client wishing to purchase these two shops and offering £2 million - a huge sum, bearing in mind that this took place some 30 years ago.
"But I turned it down," said David. "I just had a feeling that the offer was too low. I did some research and found that they were planning a
huge development and had already bought a lot of the property around me. So I said I wanted £3 million. The agent came back to me and said 'Mr Gold, my client has said he will never, never pay £3 million'. After a year of negotiation we eventually settled for £2,999,999.19s.11d!"
The rest, as they say, is history.
The Gold empire now includes, among others, Gold Air International, the Ann Summers chain of stores, which is run by his daughter Jacqueline with the help and support of her sister Vanessa, and the Knickerbox chain. Following a lifelong interest in soccer - he was a promising player in his younger days - he is also chairman of Birmingham City Football Club, of which brother Ralph is also a director.
I asked David how Gold Air International started. "Well," he said, "One day, about nine years ago, Ralph and I wanted to get to Newcastle. We wanted to get there and back again in a day and so we decided to get an air taxi from Biggin Hill airfield. We got there and were met by a scruffy lad who told us to go to a shed and said someone would be along in a minute. When the pilot appeared he didn't look much more than fourteen, and we had an awful, terrifying flight in an old Aztec aeroplane.
"When we eventually arrived back we decider that, if we were going to do these trips regularly, we ought to buy our own plane. So we bought a Beechcraft KingAir 200, which was delivered a few weeks after. And that's how Gold Air was born."
Gold Air now has its headquarters and maintenance facilities at Biggin Hill, a modern fleet of Learjet 45 and Hawker 800 aircraft, with five new Learjets on order, and a thoroughly professional staff of aircrew and support staff.
One of David's passions is flying and he is a past winner of the prestigious Malta air race. David offered Andy and myself a trip across to Biggin Hill on the Gazelle helicopter which, as you can imagine, we were not slow to accept. We flew, literally as free as a bird, over the busy M25
Both of us have now added 'A helicopter' to our Christmas lists!
