The Art Deal At Claridges Hotel — London 6th December 1990 — Meeting Margaret Thatcher

I was twenty-one years old and already felt like a veteran..

I’d left home before I was 16, and after a false start or two had moved to London alone not knowing a single soul, and somehow by the time I was seventeen I had already held a job as an equities trader at a new type of firm in the City of London. I’d been an equity trader. When I got that job I had no qualifications as I had left school before I took any exams, yet I passed an exam at the firm and had been issued a licence to trade on the London Stock Exchange issued by the then UK Department of Trade and Industry.

I’d been taken on at seventeen after an accidental meeting, me lying about my age and my determined insistence that I could sell. Within 6 months I was running a desk made up of a motley crew of other determined people (mostly men but not all) all of whom were around ten years or more older than me. And every day we traded hundreds of thousands of pounds of other peoples money.

Money was flying everywhere. The City was changing. We were new. We were different. We were hated by the old firms and the then Stock Exchange and their Chairman Nicholas Goodison. We didn’t come from privilege or old money and we didn’t have to be within running distance of the old Stock Exchange floor. It was called Big Bang, and whilst I didn’t realise it then the reason that I could pick up a phone and buy and sell stock using other people’s money when I wasn’t even allowed to own shares in my own name (being under eighteen years old) was down to a woman named Margaret Thatcher. I didn’t give her much thought. I was too busy surviving.

Then one day I walked onto our trading floor after an early lunch and the screens were all red and people were looking stunned and the phones were ringing and ringing. And in the end, I answered one and I felt the full force of real people losing their own real money, and then I watched the news that all the trees had fallen over in a storm.

That was Black Monday on the 19th of October 1987, and by then I was still 17 years old. The other traders used to joke and call me 0017 and a half.

So three years on there I was walking to Claridges. I’d never been into that hotel before but now I was on a mission. I knew that there were some Picasso drawings for sale, and I had somehow managed to find a contact that knew a contact that said there was a lady that may be interested in buying them. That’s a trade, that’s a match, that’s a bid meeting an offer, and that’s what I had learned might help me make a living.

I was hungry, I was late and I was poor. I was walking because I only had £5 left to my name and I needed that for food later. It was sleeting and my suit trousers were soaked through. I was carrying a briefcase for effect. It was only for effect, as it was empty.

I’d walked a couple of miles from my flat in Kensington and was walking at speed when I came across the hotel. As I approached I noticed a crowd outside the main door, cameras, journalists, at least fifty of them, almost a mob.

They were in my way three deep and I needed to meet a Greek lady for tea. I pulled myself tall and remembered my mum’s advice for difficult situations, which was along the lines of “Just look like you own the place” I pushed through as if I did. The moment I parted the crowd I caught the eye of a doorman who was holding his door shut against the melee. I nodded at him and kept moving straight on. Whether by training or my design I assume now he thought I was a guest or someone with a right to enter his domain over them, I heaved some guy sideways, the door opened and I was through as the doorman valiantly slammed it behind me.

I hadn’t broken step even through the crowd and I stepped straight forward onto the black and white tiled centre floor that marks Claridges reception area. If you have been through that door yourself you will know that the tea rooms are straight ahead across the expanse of tiles, to your right is a sweeping staircase going up and to your left is a reception desk. My eyes were caught by a movement to my left.

My legs were still moving forward, but my survival instinct had been triggered by the sight on my left. All along the wall were photographers, all aiming their cameras seemingly at me, amongst them were some robust looking gentlemen in suits who seeing me looked shocked. They started to reach inside their jackets whilst my legs took another step or two still moving forward fast, and within the blink of my eye, I crashed straight into someone in the middle of the black and white tiled floor.

It was a hefty impact. I slammed into them and my burgundy briefcase with its brass locks was knocked from my right hand and hit the floor. I was off balance and fell onto one knee. So did the other person. I realised then that their bag was also dislodged and their knee was also on the floor. The blue handbag spun slightly as it hit the tiles. I remember the coldness of the floor under my hand.

My eyes were down and instinctively I reached my right hand out to steady the other person and I picked up the handbag with my left as my eyes lifted up. And there in front of me, her face a few inches from mine was Margaret Thatcher, also on one knee.

Our eyes met and before I could even react she threw her hand out to her right in a stop signal. I looked past her hand and then realised that the guys in suits were within a step of us and were about to grab me. She was looking at them and she said “Stop” and she made a small hand movement, and they backed up. Her blue eyes were steely.

We slowly stood and I said “I’m so terribly sorry, I didn’t see you, it was my fault” And she replied calmly, “No, actually I didn’t see you, so it was mine.” We faced each other for one second and then she pointed to my hand in which I was still clutching her handbag, and she smiled, and said , “I think that is mine, do you think it would be all right if I took it?” I slowly offered the bag to her, and still smiling she looked down and said “and I think, that that must be yours, would you mind if I passed it to you?” and she reached down and picked up my briefcase and handed it to me. I was speechless, my chin was probably moving up and down.

Her manner was of calmness and absolute control. No shock, no anger, complete awareness of what was going on all around her but also complete focus on me. I apologised again and she said “No matter. No harm done. It was very nice to meet you but I must go now” and she offered me her right hand to shake. I took it and she gripped my hand firmly and with a last smile pulled me past her.

As she walked past me on my right toward the grand staircase I turned and watched as she went and walked up the stairs. Then I realised that right there at the top of the stairs were stood, Nancy and Ronald Reagan. They looked at me, and then at Margaret.

I stood frozen, alone in the centre of the black and white tiled reception of Claridges Hotel in London on December the 6th 1990 just one week after the lady I had just knocked over had lost the leadership of her own party on the 28th of November, and watched as she walked up the stairs, reached the top, took Ronald Reagan’s hand in hers and turned so they both faced us all and smiled and then every camera and flash in the room went off.

The next day most of the newspapers in the world ran that front page shot of the three of them at the top of those stairs and I swear that you can almost see the top of my head right in the bottom of every picture, as I had the closet view of anyone in the world.

So then I went to meet the Greek shipping lady for tea and sold her the Picassos.