ONCE you have been on television, it is hard to cope with being off it. “Aye, you’ve got something there,” says John Elliott, star of last week’s The Secret Millionaire television series on Channel 4. Rumpled and unshaven, Elliott was filmed living on benefits for a week in a desperately poor district of Liverpool, before revealing himself as one of Britain’s richer men, and distributing largesse to those who had helped him.
This did not appeal to everyone — “poverty tourism” sniffed some television critics — but 62-year-old Elliott, a Co Durham engineering magnate worth £70m, provided an entrancing subject for the camera. Portly and dishevelled in his woolly hat and fleece, shuffling round the mean streets with his clutch of plastic bags, he seemed surprisingly at ease in his new, down-at-heel role.
“Well, actually, those are just my clothes from home,” he says, looking only slightly offended. Home is normally a mansion outside Bishop Auckland that used to belong to former Sunderland footballer Kevin Phillips — colonnaded front door, indoor pool, bar with draft beer, enormous snooker room, paddocks with sheep and horses.
Even Elliott seems rather bemused by its grandeur. “We’ve got six toilets and there’s just two of us living there — that’s daft, isn’t it?” He says he is happier feeding the sheep.
Elliott does faux naïf well, a quality that makes him a very hard man to read, given his other mode is brusque certainty. Spruced up in a suit and tie at a posh London hotel, sipping mineral water, he looks much more the millionaire entrepreneur, but still protests at any labelling. Beneath, there is a measure of hardened calculation.
This, remember, is one of the business kings of the northeast, a Conservative party supporter who made his name opposing the government’s plans for a regional assembly there three years ago. He thought the assembly would be a complete “white elephant”, and the local referendum backed him.
He has also retained tight control of his Ebac manufacturing empire, which he started from nothing, and now has 500 employees, making dehumidifiers and water coolers, with sales of £30m and bases in Durham and Europe. He was going to retire 11 years ago but thought better of it. He generally operates with an eye for opportunity.
“Yeah, I did retire, but I am not sure if that lasted three weeks or three months . . .”
What changed his mind? “Alan Greenspan — he was running America’s Federal Reserve until he was 80. So I thought, here’s the deal: when I’m 60, I’ll live until I’m 100 and keep working for half that.”
But something more is shifting. Next, he says, he wants to open a string of luxury spas for women. His daughter Pamela has already opened one for him in Leeds. He may even float the operation as a separate business.
Is he bonkers? He’s an oily fingered engineer with zero experience of the health-and- beauty sector. He chuckles, his round face wobbling like a dumpling. After years of meticulously doing the same thing, building up his business and turning away offers from the big conglomerates, he says he just likes the buzz of doing something new.
And Elliott is no stranger to television. Last year his wife, Margaret, appeared in a series about how dog-training techniques could be used to rein in messy spouses. The Elliotts, it seems, rather like the camera.
“Yeah, some bloke told me I should be taken out with the dog and castrated after that,” says Elliott. “But I do think there is something in this TV business.”
It’s not hard to see why. With his deadpan Durham accent, lived-in looks and roly-poly gait he is a television natural. In The Secret Millionaire he fitted in so seamlessly with the Scousers in their pubs and launderettes, that you could think the programme producers were a mite disappointed.
But manufacturing bosses often know all about people. “You’ve got to run a business with compassion to get the best out of them,” shrugs Elliott.
He even liked the basic digs provided for him, where he could make endless, unhealthy fry-ups. It wasn’t that dissimilar from the tiny pit-village house where he grew up with his mother and grandparents.
Did he really learn anything from his week in poverty? “Yeah — that, deep down, most people are pretty good and even in city areas they have communities.”
There were surprises. Elliott ended up being so impressed by a welfare centre for asylum seekers that he gave them £7,500. And he employed a Kenyan he met there — Philip, an accountant by training who couldn’t get a job. He can now. After six months with Ebac, he has returned to Liverpool and found a position. Elliott had thought all asylum seekers were dole scroungers.
He also gave £10,000 to a family he met in church who invited him to lunch — the money went towards a deposit on a house — and £500 to the lady who helped him at the local launderette. “I said, ‘here you are, have a nice Christmas’ and shot off. I don’t know what she thought of it.”
Patronising? “I would not patronise people,” he says firmly. Does he need a television crew to prod him into philanthropy? “No, it’s just that lots of charities are so businesslike, and I’ve always thought, if you’ve got £10,000 that you didn’t need, wouldn’t it be great to go down the street and give £1,000 to each person you met?” We could start now. He laughs. Others say Elliott can be fantastically generous. Anders Thomsen, managing director of Thermal Transfer Technology, a local supplier to Ebac, recounts how Elliott rescued his company when it nearly went bust in 1991. “He just left a cheque for me in his reception for £100,000, with a note saying ‘use it wisely’. He had only met me twice. I thought it was incredible. We paid him back.”
Part of it, says Thomsen, is that Elliott is firmly plugged into the northeast, and likes to keep jobs there. That, and his desire to retain control of Ebac — it stands for Elliott Brothers Air Control — has dictated the slow but sure way in which he has managed his operation. If anyone else bought it, they would promptly shift production to China.
So why is he moving into luxury spas? Because he can, and he likes not having to answer to investors. “Actually, last year Ebac made a £2.3m loss,” he says — much of it start-up costs on the Leeds spa.
And Elliott does run a tight family. One daughter, who launched his Waterfall Spa in Leeds, is managing director at Ebac; another is production director. He also remains close to his two brothers, one of whom worked for him. All were brought up in relative poverty after their father died from asthma when Elliott, the middle child, was just six months old. He left school at 15, and took an apprenticeship as an electrical engineer. A series of jobs working for others convinced him to set up on his own in 1972, inventing an industrial dehumidifier suited to the British climate.
Since then he has developed his own idiosyncratic style, with some unfashionable views: he wishes he had left school at 13 — “two wasted years” — and says anyone with a degree is at a disadvantage already. But he is, of course, surrounded by graduate engineers who enjoy working for him. And he is happy to offer advice to any who call.
“He’s just very supportive,” says Mitchell Wolfe, who became a friend while running a factory adjacent to Ebac, “and he doesn’t thrust his wealth in your face.”
But he does like being the owner of seven racehorses. “I was told to get an expensive hobby,” says Elliott, straight-faced.
I think he has his eye on more television. We could follow him round as he opens his spas — Fred Dibnah meets Sir John Harvey-Jones, with a northeast twist. Who’s to say it won’t work? “There’s stuff on business that can be done,” nods Elliott sagely. No doubt his phone at home is already ringing.
Vital Statistics
Born: December 20, 1943
Marital status: married, with three children
School: Toft Hill, Co Durham
First job: apprentice electrical engineer
Salary package: £100,000 plus as much in dividends as he needs
Home: Bishop Auckland
Car: black BMW M3
Favourite author: Adam Smith
Favourite music: Chris Rea, Rod Stewart
Favourite film: Gone with the Wind
Favourite gadget: Yamaha keyboard
Last holiday: Malaga
John Elliott's working day
EBAC’s chairman wakes at his Bishop Auckland home at 6am. “First thing
I do is feed the horses, sheep, dogs and fish,” says John Elliott. Then he drives himself to Ebac’s factory base nearby, where he has a fry-up in the canteen. He avoids organised appointments. “I use farmers’ feet. Walking round is the best fertiliser. Talk to people, listen, never tell them what to do, that undermines managers.” He takes reports from seven executives, meets customers and suppliers, and ends the day in the customer call centre. “
It’s the best source of information.” Home by 7pm, he feeds his animals again. “The more you watch horses and sheep, the more you understand people.”
Downtime
JOHN ELLIOTT loves his animals, including his racehorses. “I’ve got seven racehorses, they cost me about £70,000 a year. On balance they lose money, but Karlani, which we bought from the Aga Khan, he’s going to win a lot. I’ve got one running on Sunday at Musselburgh, but you’ll probably find it’s pulled. The trainers never tell you.”
He also relaxes in his boat, a five-berth cruiser kept in Hartlepool marina, and by watching sport. He is an active supporter of his local amateur football and cricket clubs. “But I’m useless at sport, really. The highest score I ever got at cricket was 23.”
