SIR Gareth Southgate and Neil Hudgell are two very different individuals involved in completely different sports, but they share similar qualities.
They are both high achievers in their fields but they have humility and care about people.
I spent time with both men this week at two events for the charities I support.
The recently knighted former England football manager is an ambassador for Yorkshire children’s hospice Martin House and attended a private lunch organised by Asda chair Allan Leighton and hosted by Yorkshire County Cricket Club chairman Colin Graves in the club’s Headingley pavilion.
Martin House chief executive Clair Holdsworth updated guests on how the charity’s Build campaign, which I am on the board of, is closing in on its £22m target to fund the current rebuilding and refurbishing of Martin House in Boston Spa.
But once that is achieved there is the annual challenge of raising the £10m-plus it takes to run the hospice annually.
The 30 guests were a who’s who of Allan and Colin’s contacts made during their stellar careers running major retail groups.
I felt fortunate to be in the same room as all of these individuals and could have filled several blogs with the conversations from the day, but Allan wanted the lunch to be held under Chatham House rules so guests could relax and speak freely.
He asked everyone to introduce themselves and to briefly tell their fellow guests about their best and worst sporting moments – the only bit Allan told me that he was happy that could be quoted.
Given that some of the guests had played international sport I quickly surmised that perhaps I should take a different tack when it came to my sporting best and worst.
So I said that my best sporting moment was starting a Mexican wave at a test match (I’m not sure how that went down with Colin Graves and his guests, former sports minister the Right Honourable Nigel Adams and former President of the MCC Phillip Hodson) and my worst sporting moment was being run over by a golf buggy driven by the sports editor of the Observer.
Sir Gareth’s best and worst sporting moments perhaps are the best way of illustrating his humility.
He said his best sporting moment was watching his daughter win a sports trophy and batting alongside his son in a local cricket match.
His worst sporting moment came when he was England manager.
Not in a major international match involving the national team, but when he was asked to manage a team of nine-year-olds on a local park and realised he had got absolutely no control of them whatsoever.
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AFTER I arrived at the Martin House lunch I stood in the Hawke Suite and looked out at the sunlit Headingley Stadium, which, even empty of supporters, has a presence that explains why it is one of the world’s great sporting venues.
Yorkshire CCC chairman Robin Smith greeted me warmly but delivered the poignant news that cricketing great and legendary umpire Harold “Dickie” Bird had died that morning at the age of 92.
I’d only seen Dickie in the summer at a Yorkshire match at Scarborough when he was a guest of Phillip and Sally-Anne Hodson.
Dressed in a chalk-striped suit and with his hair Brylcreemed neatly, Dickie chatted to guests and had to plan his arrival and departure times carefully given the number of cricket fans who wanted to grab a word with the great man.
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YOU may not have heard of Neil Hudgell, but you’ll know the stories of the individuals and families that he represents.
His firm, Hudgell Solicitors, acts for the victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal and is at the forefront of the fight to secure justice for former sub-postmasters – the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history.
The Hull-based but national firm also represents the families of victims of the Manchester Arena bombing and the families of the three people killed in the Nottingham stabbing attacks in 2023.
Neil was the guest speaker at an event for East Yorkshire charity Run With It, of which I am a trustee, at a breakfast event this week.
It was held at the impressive Drewton’s, a farm shop, restaurant and wedding and events venue created by entrepreneur Katie Taylor MBE in rolling countryside outside the picturesque East Yorkshire village of South Cave.
Run With It delivers innovative and engaging learning programmes for children and young people to raise levels of literacy and numeracy using stimulating environments as classrooms – such as sports stadiums, the Flemingate shopping centre in Beverley and now Humberside Airport.
After hearing from the charity’s chair, Hull entrepreneur Shaun Watts and director Lisa Dawson it was great that two of the trustees who are head teachers, Chris Huscroft and Mark Batty, were able to tell guests about the real life benefits of what they see Run With It deliver.
And both admitted that as much as they try to inspire and educate children in school, taking them out of the traditional classroom setting makes a hugely positive impact on young people.
I then hosted a fireside chat-style Q&A session with Neil Hudgell.
He is the chairman of Hull Kingston Rovers, the Super League team which this year won the Challenge Cup for the first time since 1980 and also the League Leader’s Shield.
While rugby league might be viewed as a principally “northern” sport, Neil Hudgell put Hull KR on the international stage this year when the club’s Craven Park ground hosted two concerts by Coldplay.
Craven Park is also where Run With It holds learning sessions for youngsters.
The sold-out concerts in Hull and 10 dates at Wembley Stadium in London were the only European cities played by Chris Martin and the band this year.
I wondered how Neil had managed to get a world renowned act to come to East Hull ahead of every other major European city that would have wanted them?
He said he had some conversations with concert promoter Simon Moran who owns the Warrington Wolves rugby league team.
“It quickly went from a one per cent chance to a 99 per cent chance of getting them when I found out that Coldplay were keen to play a different venue in the North of England ahead of their Wembley dates,” said Neil.
He said not one contract was signed to secure Coldplay and the whole deal was done on a handshake.
Neil’s humility came across as he explained how proud he was to have been able to give people in his home city the chance to experience one of the biggest rock bands in the world.
“Even those that didn’t have tickets and lived nearby were having barbecues in their gardens and enjoying the music!” he smiled.
When I asked him about his memories of being the chairman and owner of his boyhood rugby league club and winning the Challenge Cup for the first time in 45 years, Neil paused and said: “The day after we won at Wembley we had an open-top bus tour around Hull with the players and the cup.
“We went past the spot where I stood with my grandparents outside their prefab house and watched the Challenge Cup held up by the players on top of a bus back in 1980.”
High achievement and success takes talent and a lot of hard work, but staying grounded is the greatest challenge.
I was fortunate enough to meet two individuals this week who have accomplished that.
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I DON’T play many corporate golf days.
My excuses are either work commitments or the fluctuating fortunes of my golf game.
The only golf day I managed to get to this year was at Oakdale Golf Club in Harrogate hosted by Titan Wealth.
I was invited by photographer Simon Dewhurst to join the team of the firm’s non-executive chairman Peter Heckingbottom.
My friend and media training partner, former BBC journalist Simon Hare, made up our team and, despite rainy conditions, we had a cracking day and didn’t play bad golf either.
Simon Hare won the nearest the pin competition and our team score was good enough to be in with a shout of achieving honours.
Titan Wealth, which sponsors the Leeds Tykes rugby union team, has a growing profile and Peter was kind enough to introduce me to the firm’s chief executive Mark Puleikis and head of business development Isabelle Clough.
It was nice to bump into Siobhan Hagerty of law firm Maven Radd – also a sponsor of the Tykes – who was in the team that came second.
Given I missed the Maven Radd golf day the week before, I think I need to up my game next year – all in the name of business development.
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WHEN it comes to the people that I most respect and like in business, Keith Loudon OBE, life president at independent stockbrokers Redmayne Bentley, is right up there.
Aged 92 and now confined to a wheelchair following a stroke some years ago, Keith still has plenty of energy and the positive approach to life that made him such a successful force of nature in his business career where he was senior partner at the Leeds-based national investment management and stockbroking firm for almost 53 years.
Keith, a former Lord Mayor of Leeds, held a garden party recently at his Leeds home where friends and family gathered.
Showery weather meant that the only ones who were in the garden were one of Keith’s great-grandchildren steering a toy car across the lawn and one of his grandsons whose three French bulldogs stared enviously at the buffet being consumed by the gathered throng through the patio windows.
Keith was on great form and has always been a source of fascinating information and knowledge.
He is one of the few business people I’ve known who understand a news story from a journalistic perspective and he was always ready with a quote on a quiet Sunday or bank holiday Monday when the business pages of the Yorkshire Post needed filling.
I took Keith a copy of a book published to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Yorkshire Post in 2004.
He hadn’t seen it before and phoned me the following day to thank me and tell me he had enjoyed reading it.
But typically, blunt Yorkshireman Keith’s dry sense of humour was on display as he told me:
“I’m so sorry that the three pages on David Parkin have been edited out by an aggressive editor!”
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DRIVING along the M62 to East Yorkshire as the sun came up dappling the fields and wind turbines in an orange glow, I listened to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.
When Sean Farrington, who interviewed me on Radio 5 Live some years ago following the death of supermarket titan Sir Ken Morrison, introduced the business news which included the highlights of an interview with John Roberts, the CEO and founder of online electrical retailer AO.
Unlike some business chiefs, Roberts wasn’t afraid to put the boot into the current government and Chancellor Rachel Reeves in particular for increasing costs on British businesses – such as the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions – which he feels is giving a competitive advantage to overseas rivals who sell their products in the UK.
The interview with John Roberts was the first in a series of in-depth interviews with some of the UK’s most high profile CEOs and entrepreneurs which the BBC is running under the title: Big Boss Interview.
The BBC has long had a problem with the way it handles business news.
Up until a few years ago business news rarely got a look-in on our national broadcaster’s main news bulletins unless it involved job losses, strikes or the vast salaries and bonuses of the “fat cats” running businesses.
Things have improved immeasurably, but I wonder if ‘Big Boss Interview’ is a good idea for a title?
In my experience those running businesses rarely refer to themselves as ‘the boss’ and understand that running a business these days involves leading by example, motivating and supporting colleagues rather than standing above them acting like the head honcho or grand fromage.
So giving the interview series a catchy title might be aimed at attracting listeners who don’t naturally consume business news, but I question whether it will “chime” (as an old editor of mine used to say) with the interview subjects themselves.
When I arrived at Drewton’s for the Run With It breakfast, I chatted to owner Katie Taylor over a coffee about her work setting up the farm shop, restaurant and wedding and event venue from scratch on the East Yorkshire estate acquired by her family who started in the textile industry in West Yorkshire.
As I sipped coffee from a small china cup and saucer I glanced enviously at the large coffee mug Katie was holding.
On the front it said: “The Boss”.
Scrap what I said earlier.
Have a great weekend.