I’VE always hankered after being mistaken for somebody famous or successful.
But with my looks and talent, that doesn’t happen very often.
Last week was different.
I paid a visit to iconic North Leeds Italian restaurant The Flying Pizza, now part of the San Carlo stable, for the first time in a while.
There were plenty of new faces among the restaurant staff but I recognised a couple of them and said hello.
Next minute a huge complimentary tomato and garlic bread was being placed in the centre of our table.
And after the meal we were offered limoncellos on the house.
I thanked the manager warmly for the generous gesture.
He replied: “It is my pleasure Steve, it is always good to see you.”
As I was thinking: ‘Steve who?” he leaned closer to me and said: “I saw you in the Yorkshire Evening Post at number two on the list!” and winked at me before gliding away.
Then the penny dropped.
He clearly thought he had Steve Parkin in the restaurant.
He is the founder of Clipper Logistics who was recently named on a list of Yorkshire’s wealthiest people with an estimated fortune of £530m.
I downed my limoncello and headed out onto the rain and wind swept Street Lane to get my bus home.
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IF there is one thing football fans want more than anything for their team, it is success, as quickly as possible.
But football rarely delivers instant gratification.
For teams to win a title or climb the leagues can take years of hard work.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” said iconic manager Brian Clough, before adding: “But I wasn’t on that particular job.”
An increasing scourge in modern football is insolvency.
Clubs spend months, sometimes years, teetering on the brink of financial collapse before the administrators are eventually called in.
In the last 15 years a dozen clubs among the 92 in the top four English divisions have either entered administration or a CVA (company voluntary arrangement.
The latest in that list is one of the country’s oldest clubs, Sheffield Wednesday.
Bought a decade ago by a consortium headed by Dejphon Chansiri, the errant son of a Thai tinned tuna magnate, the South Yorkshire Club has experienced a rollercoaster ride over the last 10 years with very few ups.
Chansiri’s running of the club was certainly erratic, rarely engaging with fans, struggling to pay staff wages on several occasions and assuming the role of absentee landlord in recent years.
I even heard a story that at one meeting he lost interest in the conversation, pulled up his shirt and started playing tunes on his stomach.
With HMRC chasing unpaid tax bills, the club was eventually placed into administration last month.
That spelled the end of Chansiri’s time at Hillsborough and the appointment of joint administrators from business recovery and financial advisory firm Begbies Traynor.
Kris Wigfield, Paul Stanley and Julian Pitts are tasked with finding a buyer for the Championship club.
Unusually for these situations, one of the joint administrators, Kris Wigfield, is a fan of the club and has been a season ticket holder for 40 years.
I heard some speculation that that might be a conflict of interest, but I actually think it is a positive.
Surely Wigfield has more than a vested interest and passion in wanting to make sure the next custodian of his club has the resources and credibility to ensure it has a sustainable and hopefully successful future.
His colleague Julian Pitts has earned his reputation as an eminent and experienced insolvency practitioner, not just in Yorkshire, but nationally.
Julian has worked on football club insolvencies previously.
And as a long-suffering fan of Plymouth Argyle, he understands the vagaries of football.
For anyone who has taken even a passing interest in football, getting rid of a detested club owner might be viewed as a positive, but insolvency opens a whole new can of worms.
Potential suitors emerge from the shadows that can include enough freaks and fantasists to make contestants on a series of Big Brother look normal.
I remember when Leeds United went into administration 20-odd years ago, would-be buyers included a phoney professor, a fake sheikh and an African oil billionaire with no oil and not that much money.
My own club, Derby County, went into administration in September 2021 and spent the rest of the season being run by unremarkable representatives of advisory firm Quantuma.
They engaged with potential bidders including 29-year-old Erik Alonso, who claimed he was a former world boxing champion and posted social media photos of himself reclining on a private jet.
He drifted back into obscurity after he posted a video on social media of a stunning hilltop mansion with the sun streaming in through its floor to ceiling windows accompanied by the caption: “Good morning”.
It clearly suggested that that is where he lived.
Very nice for him. Until a little bit of research by a student who was a Derby County fan found that Alonso had pinched it from a Tik Tok video about a £42m luxury home being sold by a Los Angeles real estate agent.
Next up was American businessman Chris Kirchner who was named preferred bidder and given several weeks of exclusivity to get the deal done – during which he was courted by the local council, met fans in pubs and outlined his grand plans to the media.
But the money, which he promised was in international bank accounts, never quite arrived and he walked away from buying Derby County.
In 2024 37-year-old Kirchner was jailed for fraud and is currently serving 20 years in a US federal prison.
He was also ordered to pay £50m in compensation to investors in his logistics business Slync.
Much of their money had been spent by Kirchner on a $16m private jet, super cars, watches and jewellery.
The joint administrators of Sheffield Wednesday will be aware of all this as they sift through the pile of potential bidders for the club.
They said this week that they are getting closer to narrowing down the list to “serious and viable bidders”.
It won’t just be Sheffield Wednesday fans who hope they can achieve a positive outcome.
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MY recent piece about Leeds-based film maker Studio TCT raising money to launch dedicated channels on YouTube brought this fascinating reflection from my old journalist colleague and friend Richard Alleyne.
Richard, who like me, started his journalistic career on the Derby Evening Telegraph, went off to work at a news agency before heading to Fleet Street to join the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
He then pursued a career as a freelance writer in California where he met one of the founders of YouTube, Steve Chen.
“He was really shy and unassuming, although he had already sold the business.”
And what an exit.
We used to get told at journalism college that you had to hook your readers with something interesting as early as possible.
Richard’s profile article about meeting Chen had the following introduction, or intro as journalists call it: “There are overnight success stories and then there is YouTube. Set up in 2005 by work colleagues Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in a garage, it was sold just over a year later for $1.65billion (£874 million).”
As Richard reflects, without any exaggeration: “That’s a good pay out.”
You’re not wrong sunshine.
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LAST week’s blog received more feedback than I have had for a while.
I produce intelligent and incisive commentary on business and economic matters week after week (well don’t take a vote on it) and then I mention a pub, a rap song and a knocking shop and I get overwhelmed with messages.
Many people remembered The Highland pub – now renamed and relaunched as The Highland Laddie – as a down-to-earth boozer which served a lovely pint of Tetley back in the day.
A couple of people proudly informed me that their first visits to the venue pre-dated mine by many years.
I welcome such one-upmanship as it reinforces my somewhat deluded notion that I’m still youthful…
Mention of walking past the one time well known Leeds venue Winston’s brought more messages than expected.
I reflected when I raised the subject of Winston’s last week that it was a mysterious establishment that everybody had heard of but nobody ever admitted going to.
That has been reinforced by messages and comments from several people who have promised to divulge stories about the place.
On showing interest in hearing said stories, each correspondent, to a man, has caveated their comment with the words: “It isn’t my story, it is a story that somebody else told me.”
And then there was the message from a very senior figure in Yorkshire business who wrote: “Allegedly Winston’s had a fabulous pool table in the room at the back…”
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IF that revelation wasn’t surprising enough, last week’s blog also unearthed another uncomfortable truth.
I appear to have discovered the only lawyer in Yorkshire who is a fan of rap music.
I paraphrased the words of Rapper’s Delight by The Sugarhill Gang to reflect Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ recent flip flopping over next week’s Budget.
Which received this response from an eminent lawyer known for their corporate work in jurisdictions across the globe.
“Boogie all night long.”
I know, that is what I was thinking.
Short and to the point.
I imagine if I was a client the email would have been substantially longer – and accompanied by a chunky bill.
However on reflection, have you ever heard a rapper utter the words: “Boogie all night long”?
I know some other things they boast they can do all night long, but not boogie.
In fact wasn’t it the disco duo Baccara that sang: “Yes Sir I Can Boogie”?
“Oooohh! Yes sir, I can boogie
But I need a certain song
I can boogie, boogie woogie all night long…”
Have a great weekend.
He says, as he sashays and hip sways into the distance (punctuated by the odd slut drop for dramatic emphasis).