A few months ago I lifted the lid on the disastrous start to my working life at Nationwide Building Society in Newport, South Wales. I ended that painful story with the news that I bounced back with promotion to Nationwide’s head office in London as press officer. It’s time to share that happier chapter in my working life.

I was fortunate that Nationwide in those days recruited internally for jobs in PR and marketing, rather than appointing people with established careers. But it still expected me to write a news release during the interview to make sure I could do the job. This was easy, as I had some experience helping Dad with his PR projects. Looking back at my resulting effort (see above) I cringe at the misplaced commas and spaces, but I was working against the clock on an unfamiliar computer system. (As a 23 year old, I’d never used a computer at work.) I wonder if my interviewers spotted that I’d given the fictional director a name borrowed from Shakespeare’s Macbeth? They gave me the job.

Life in London

I soon got into a routine. Before arriving at Nationwide’s head office, Chesterfield House in Bloomsbury, I’d pick up a coffee and KitKat from the High Holborn snack bar seen above. (The building was once the entrance to British Museum tube station, which closed in the 1930s after nearby Holborn station was expanded. The building was later demolished, and the replacement housed Nationwide’s London office after head office moved to Swindon.)

Most evenings I left Chesterfield House after the main reception closed, and over 35 years later I can still remember the way the two security men by the rear door greeted me on the way out. One boomed ‘Good night!’ while the other voiced a much more tentative ‘Good night, Sir’.

In 1989, I started cycling the 13 miles to work, storing my bike in the boiler room in Chesterfield House. One morning Mary, the secretary to the society’s chairman, told me off after she saw me cycling without a helmet. (She spotted me as her Routemaster bus overtook me going along Piccadilly towards Piccadilly Circus.)

‘Getting together for a better service’

Nationwide had merged with Anglia Building Society three months before I started my new job. It now had more branches than it needed, including some neighbouring Anglia and Nationwide offices. As I settled in to my new role, I announced that some of these duplicate branches were to close, under the dubious headline ‘getting together for a better service’. I soon realised that wasn’t true, but I had yet to gain the confidence to tell a story without a dose of corporate bullshit.

Meet the team

Early in my PR career time I wrote a feature for Nationwide’s internal magazine about what the press office did. It was the first of many attempts over the years to explain media relations to executives and internal audiences. I was irritated by one edit by the then editor of Nationwide News. I had mentioned arranging for a reporter to interview a customer who had applied for a home loan. I wrote that the customer thought it was a leg pull as ‘media interviews don’t usually form part of Nationwide’s mortgage application process’. The editor, who’d never worked in a branch, deleted the word ‘media’ not realising that interviews with staff were definitely part of the process, as I knew from my experience on the new mortgage desk at Newport branch.

Baptism of fire: ‘Is Nationwide going bust?’

It should have been a quiet day in the office in 1988. It was August, the month traditionally known as the silly season as journalists seek stories to fill the summer news drought. But a call from Daily Telegraph reporter Barbara Ellis shattered my complacency. An industry analyst called Ian Wriglesworth had just published a league table showing how Britain’s building societies had performed financially in the past 12 months. Nationwide was rooted to the bottom of the table, hit by the costs of the recent merger and losses sustained by its newly-acquired estate agency network. Ellis asked me for a response and an explanation – not least how Nationwide Estate Agents had lost millions of pounds despite a booming housing market. (House prices rose by a third in the previous 12 months.)

Looking back, I don’t know why I felt so alone facing the storm, despite Ellis’s forensic questioning. True, I was one of just two people working in the press office at the time, and my boss Jeff Wagland was on holiday, but his boss, Nigel Snell, was around, and I remember discussing our response with Nigel. Later, after fielding calls from the national media, I got a call from Nationwide’s West Central branch, which was just across the road. An elderly customer had seen the news reports, and was afraid that she’d lose her life savings if Nationwide went bust. Could I pop over to reassure her?

As I sat in the branch talking to her, I wondered whether I should even be having the conversation. (It would never happen in today’s highly regulated world: a customer would now be sent an answer reviewed and approved by lawyers.) But during those tense hours in 1988 I was sure of one thing: Nationwide was in no danger. And as it was a building society not a bank its less than stellar financial performance had no impact on its customers, and we had no shareholders. Ironically, the society had changed its name to Nationwide in 1970 from Cooperative Permanent because customers were afraid their money was at risk during a financial crisis in Britain’s unconnected co-operative movement.

I never did find a good official explanation for why Nationwide lost so much money on its estate agency. But it wasn’t alone. Building societies and insurers spent millions buying estate agents in the late 1980s. As the housing market boomed, they assumed that estate agents would be ideally placed to sell mortgages to home buyers. Nationwide executive Fred Desmond went on a tour with a cheque book buying dozens of estate agencies on the spot. But the spending spree was based on a very expensive misunderstanding: an estate agent acts for the seller, and so doesn’t have a relationship with the buyer. Nationwide finally admitted defeat in 1994 after losing over £200 million.

The great teachers mortgage mystery

After 18 months in the job I was getting into my stride. I knew the answer to most questions that reporters posed, and had internal experts who could help with the rest. But in the spring of 1989 I was stumped. A national journalist wanted details of the special mortgage that Nationwide had launched for teachers. The leader of a small trade union, the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT), had announced the new home loan. It wasn’t an outlandish idea, as Nationwide launched a mortgage for nurses not long before, but I knew nothing about this one. No one in marketing or the housing department did either. In desperation I called Tim Melville-Ross, Nationwide’s chief executive. He was none the wiser.

We finally discovered that the union (today part of a larger union called Community) had struck a deal with a Nationwide branch in the East Midlands. In those days branches could offer special terms to certain intermediaries such as lawyers and accountants. That’s what had happened here. However, the branch was dealing with a media savvy union rather than a sleepy solicitor, and the PAT saw the deal as a chance to attract members from rival teaching unions. That’s why I was inundated with all those media enquiries. The coverage prompted Nationwide to consider creating an official home loan for teachers before quickly ditching the idea. Back in 1989 there were no fixed rate mortgages and very few mortgage discounts, which is why the mystery mortgage in the PAT story was so newsworthy.

My cash card is ‘nicked’ on The Bill

No, I wasn’t being arrested. I’d arranged for the popular Thames Television police drama The Bill to film at Nationwide’s Shepherds Bush branch in London. The scene featured PC Stamp, played by Graham Cole, who was trying to take money out. The hapless Stamp had his cash card swallowed by the ATM as he’d forgotten his PIN. The card was mine – and I arranged for Nationwide’s branch staff to fish it out of the back of the ATM at the end of each take.

Producer Jonathan Posner had sent me the script for this brief scene, which he amended after I explained that the original scenario wouldn’t happen in real life. It made a change from talking about savings and mortgages!

The branch axe falls, 1989

In the autumn of 1989 I had a more sober task: announcing that Nationwide was closing 170 branches and making 400 people redundant. At the time it was the biggest ever rationalisation project by a major building society or bank, and the news came as a shock. I briefed media with chief executive Tim Melville-Ross: Tim talked to the nationals, while I spoke to the regional and trade press. The analyst John Wriglesworth, who had caused me so much stress the year before, called it a ‘bold move to rectify the society’s abysmal performance’. Tim and his leadership team had recognised that the modest closures of overlapping branches straight after the Anglia merger weren’t enough, especially as the housing boom had turned to bust, with mortgage rates in the course of almost doubling to 15.4 per cent in just under two years.

I received a stark reminder of the human impact of the news when I went to see Nationwide’s house price expert Barry Bissett to help answer an unrelated media enquiry about the housing market. He told me sadly that his secretary had been made redundant. I never forgot that lesson in the years that followed when called upon to announce job cuts for Eagle Star and PayPal. They’re all about people, not numbers.

Fun and games

I’ve only been rock climbing once – thanks to Nationwide. Back in the late 1980s the society sent staff on Outward Bound-style team building courses in the Lake District in northern England. The Marketing department – which included PR in those days – decided everyone should take part, in small groups. We soon found that by contrast the branches only sent people they regarded as ‘difficult’. It made for an interesting experience.

We stayed in a lovely hotel overlooking Windermere. It used to be a private house, and still had a panel of bells that once summoned staff to attend to the whims of the wealthy owner. We enjoyed lavish two course lunches and three course dinners. I later found out that people on real Outward Bound courses had a far less luxurious experience.

Our first mission was to build rafts to sail across a small lake. I’m hopeless at these practical tasks, and it was no surprise that on my raft’s only voyage I ended up swimming rather than rafting. We also abseiled, and I earned the epithet spider man after spinning out of control.

Our final task was an overnight mission. We were taken to a mystery location: a primitive hut, where we had to plan how to get back to base. This was a fraught experience as one of the ‘difficult’ team members was living up to his billing. A few of the marketing folk set out an early breakfast to give us energy for the hike back to Windermere. As we tucked in, someone started spitting out his food. Those who’d laid out the meal were alarmed as a glass had shattered earlier, and they were worried that remaining fragments of glass might have ended up in the cereal. But it turned out that the sugar the victim thought he’d added was actually salt!

I enjoyed the experience, but it put me off mountaineering for life…

My modest role in Britain’s first televised budget speech

Few people will remember the British government’s 1990 budget announcement, yet for once the adjective historic is justified. John Major’s only budget as chancellor of the exchequer was the first to be televised after the House of Commons finally let in the cameras.

The BBC wanted Nationwide boss Tim Melville-Ross to join the studio panel and he was quick to agree. He drew a vivid analogy of the government’s dilemma in guiding the economy through boom and bust:

‘It’s like pulling a brick towards you across a table with an elastic band. You pull and nothing happens – and then suddenly it rushes towards you. We could be in exactly that situation with the economy.’

The biggest feature of the budget for Nationwide was the launch of Britain’s first tax free savings account, which Major called TESSA. Just before I left the office that night, a reporter asked whether Nationwide would offer a TESSA. It seemed a no brainer, but I said I couldn’t give an answer that night. Later in my career I’d have been more bullish – but would also have been able to obtain rapid leadership confirmation by mobile phone. ISAs replaced TESSAs in 1999.

As a press officer, I found Tim wonderful to work with. If the BBC asked me to put him up for the lunchtime news he almost always said yes. As a young and inexperienced PR man I learned a lot by working with such a media-savvy chief executive. When I met him at an event years later he admitted with a smile that he’d been a ‘young man in a hurry’ at Nationwide, and made mistakes as a result. I admired him all the more for the confession.

‘You won’t do that again, will you!’

Marketing chief Brian Whitfield was the other Nationwide leader I loved working with. Brian was incredibly smart, and gave me an early lesson in how to manage people. Building societies were making a lot of money in commission from selling insurance to their customers. When the Daily Telegraph asked me how much Nationwide had made from these sales in the past year I gave them the figure. Minutes later I realised this wasn’t the wisest thing to do. It wasn’t market sensitive information – Nationwide wasn’t a quoted company, so there was no share price to influence – but it was reputationally awkward as we were profiting from overpriced insurance policies. I went to see Brian and confessed, bracing myself for a bollocking. Instead, he simply said ‘you won’t do that again, will you!’ He knew I was sorry about my blunder and nothing would be gained by making me feel even smaller. I never forgot that wise man’s response, and have tried to follow his example when managing people.

Brian was also a canny strategic thinker. In 1988, banks and building societies had to choose whether to become independent intermediaries, selling investments from a range of companies, or to sell only one company’s investments. Nationwide decided to make a virtue of being independent (I wrote at least one media article explaining our approach) but in 1989 all its major rivals became linked with big investment firms. Nationwide panicked, and abandoned independence to tie with Guardian Royal Exchange (GRE), one of the few firms not to have found a banking partner. GRE was one of the worst performing investment providers, with high costs and poor returns. Brian told me on the day of the announcement that he’d opposed the deal. He was proved right. A decade later, The Guardian commented:

‘[Nationwide] has been stung by criticism about its endowment sales tie-up with Guardian Royal Exchange… Thousands of home buyers bought the plans – Nationwide will not disclose the exact figures – but a survey in August [1999] found that they were at the bottom of the performance table, paying out one-third less than endowments from other leading providers. Nationwide cut the tie with GRE in 1995.’

On a more trivial note, I once told the Daily Telegraph that Nationwide wasn’t ‘in the business of pulling the wool over our customers’ ears’. I liked to provide a vivid, quotable phrase, but sometimes stumbled over the exact words! Fortunately I corrected myself before this unlikely image appeared in print in a story about some long-forgotten issue.

The first time home buyer is back – perhaps

Every PR person gets a thrill from landing a big story. One of my favourite moments was spotting my story claiming the first time home buyer was back plastered over a London Evening Standard bill board outside Holborn tube station. (The paper’s front page is visible behind me and assistant Jan Hale in the photo above, taken the day I left Nationwide four months later.) The news release highlighted Nationwide’s latest review of house prices, and made headlines because politicians, businesses and the public were desperate for signs that the housing market crash was ending. The hope of recovery was soon dashed: Britain was about to enter a severe economic recession, which lasted for a year and a quarter. Over two million people found their homes were worth less than their mortgage, and 345,000 had their homes repossessed by their lender.

My craziest day: scoring a hat-trick and hitting the headlines

I’ll never forget Friday 5 October 1990. At lunchtime, I played football with other members of the Marketing team, and scored a hat-trick for the second and last time in my life. Everything I did seemed to come good. I returned to the office in a good mood.

I should have known that my hopes of a quiet end to the week would be dashed. The weekend press often sprang nasty surprises on Friday afternoons. Today, though, it was a good news story that jolted me back to life. My phone rang: it was chief executive Tim Melville-Ross. ‘John Major [the chancellor of the Exchequer] has announced that Britain is joining the European exchange rate mechanism, along with a bank base interest rate cut. The board has agreed to cut our mortgage rate. Please announce it.’

I sprang to life. I was used to announcing mortgage rate changes, but this was the first rate cut for almost two years, when the mortgage rate was an eye-watering 15.4 per cent. I started typing the news release, but was constantly interrupted by calls from reporters. I decided it would be quicker to phone the news to the news agencies, the BBC and the national media. The next task was to draw up examples of how much people would pay, and save, a month on a typical home loan. As I was the only person in the press office that day I got someone from marketing to work out the figures for me while I arranged for Tim to appear on the evening TV news, and for the BBC to film at a branch over the weekend.

The episode summed up the joy of working for a business that was a household name. I loved being at the centre of a big story, talking to reporters and helping shape the headlines. After I moved to Eagle Star the following month I missed this. That company sold its life insurance, pensions and insurance policies through brokers, so the national media only took an interest when things went badly wrong. Later, Eagle Star rediscovered the flair for innovation that had made its name 80 years earlier (it had invented the modern home insurance policy). I loved the way we were then able to make the headlines – but that’s a story for another blogpost.

My oddest job for Nationwide: posing as Francis Drake

Dressing up as Sir Francis Drake wasn’t in my job description as Nationwide press officer. But that was one of my very last tasks before I moved on. The society ran a competition between branches called Partnership Programme, and I was asked to pose as Sir Francis Drake and challenge each branch to a game of bowls in the finals. (Inspired by the legend that Drake finished a game of bowls before sailing off to defeat the Spanish Armada.)

The games were held at Nidd Hall, a lovely hotel in Yorkshire. I took part in the go-karting, and was surprised to post a really quick time, which future CEO Brian Davis only narrowly beat.

In the name of charity

Children in Need and Red Nose Day weren’t so big 35 years ago, but building society branches were already holding fund-raising events, and Nationwide’s head office got into the spirit. Few made such an impression as new Nationwide News editor Steve Doswell, who made a suit and hat from old issues of his magazine.

My final game

I played one final Nationwide football game days before I left. Business Development (as Marketing and PR had just been renamed) took on a Finance team at Luton Town FC. It was strange playing at a top tier (First Division in those days) football ground. Sadly I couldn’t match my goal-scoring heroics of a month earlier, and was switched to playing in goal before the end. I let in more than I saved, unlike during my goalkeeping glory days at Cardiff High School 12 years earlier…

There’s a strange sequel. Years later, my young son Owen went to school with a couple of boys whose fathers were professional footballers, including a former England captain. When he saw the photo of me on the pitch at Luton (below) he assumed I was also once a football star!

Leaving Nationwide

It was time to move on. While I gained incredible experience as the often sole person in the Nationwide press office, keeping the show on the road, I was frustrated that I received plaudits rather than promotion. I was approached about a more senior role at Eagle Star insurance (now called Zurich), and in November 1990 said goodbye to my Nationwide friends. We staged many reunions over the following three decades.

I held my leaving party at Stefano’s wine bar next to Holborn tube station. This was a regular venue for our Friday night drinks, but we never understood why we were drawn to it. Empty dining tables took up most of the space, leaving a cramped area around the bar for drinkers, and a subdued atmosphere. Yet we kept going back, despite having nicer venues such as the Princess Louise and Truckles of Pied Bull Yard closer to the office in Chesterfield House.

At the end of the evening, after failing in my impossible mission to persuade a black cab driver to take me ‘south of the river’, I hailed a mini cab home. My Nationwide career was over. It had begun very badly at Newport, but my three years helping to build and defend Nationwide’s reputation proved the making of me professionally. I have followed the society’s fortunes fondly ever since.

Postscript

A few additional points that may be of interest, at least to anoraks!

Between 1987 and 1991 the society was known as Nationwide Anglia, after Nationwide and Anglia merged. For simplicity and brevity I’ve used the current name throughout this post.

My office, Nationwide’s last London head office Chesterfield House, used to be called New Oxford House. That name was transferred in the 1960s to its new HQ just across the road. A number of Nationwide branches around the country are in buildings called New Oxford House – presumably echoing a location in its early days?

Building societies are mutual businesses owned by their customers, who are technically members, but not shareholders. When I started working for Nationwide in 1986 I was told firmly that societies did not make profits – but surpluses. That subtlety was soon lost, as was the insistence that mortgage lenders possessed rather than repossessed a defaulting borrower’s home through the admirably pedantic logic that the lender had never possessed it in the first place.

Until I wrote this post I’d forgotten that building societies once automatically deducted tax from the interest they paid to savers regardless of whether the customer was a taxpayer. This ‘composite tax’ arrangement dated back almost a century, and benefitted the wealthy who paid less in tax. But it punished poorer savers who lost (at 1990 tax rates) over a fifth of their interest in tax that they weren’t liable for. In 1990 men and women in Britain were taxed independently for the first time, which meant the so-called composite tax rate had to go. It’s extraordinary to think that women’s incomes were taxed under their husband’s annual allowance as recently as 1990, the year Margaret Thatcher resigned after 11 years as Britain’s first female prime minister.